Pitsford water with Sarah

It was stupid o'clock in the morning.  I had set the alarm for 6:30, but worried about not getting up in time, I was wide awake by 5:30, so I used the extra time to prepare my packed food for the day.  Porridge in its own Tupperware. Hopefully I would be able to find some milk and a microwave to prepare it.  A turkey bagel, some dates, a banana and a clementine and a drink of electrolyte water.

I set off at 7:15 for the drive to Oxford, knowing that I would still have to wait a long time for my run, and thus plenty of time to fuel. 

I have a termly meeting in Oxford, and as @mia79gbr was training for her Thames Trot 50 mile ultra marathon we figured we would use the opportunity of my being in the area to do a Riverside run.  Unfortunately recent flooding had put paid to that plan, and we decided instead to meet an hour north of Oxford to run around Pitsford water.

Christ Church meadow in Oxford, under a lot of water

After a busy morning of committee meeting minute taking whilst eating, and catching up with some old Uni friends, I jumped in the car for another hour of driving... So 3.5 hours of driving in total by this point.

We met in the carpark and it was a beautiful spring like day.  We didn't get going until after 2pm and it was mid-Janurary, so we didn't have a lot of daylight.  We had decided an easy first lap (7 miles) and then we could play with pace in the second lap... However, Sarah's easy, and my easy are quite different, so we ended up somewhere in between, plus I wasn't feeling great from not enough sleep and all that driving.  We seemed to do every mile in about 9:10 when my long run pace had been more like 9:50.... Very soon from starting I realised I was wearing too many clothses, so we decided we would have a pitstop to put my jacket in the car.  Sarah was using her super swanky ultra vest, so seemed to have storage for everything, but we completed the first 7 in

9:53 / 9:32 / 9:21 / 9:04 / 9:10 / 9:08 / 8:57

I was convinced I was going to bonk on the second half, but I also wanted to test my marathon and half marathon race paces when tired.  Perhaps this wasn't the best run to do this on, as it was only a few days after my 12x 400m session, which had been my first piece of speedwork in ages.  We were going to set off at marathon pace, but having forgotten to tighten my bumbag after removing a layer, I had to stop and faff, so we had a mile easy before going into MP then HMP.

9:50 / 8:31 (MP) / 8:03 (HMP). I found the HMP particularly impossible on that day, the wind had started to pick up a little, my tummy wasn't very happy, and Sarah was chatting away whilst I was struggling to breath... At the end of this faster section, I really did feel as if all the energy was sapped from my legs, so I didn't think that there would be much use in doing more increased pace work. Once I caught my breath I had to apologise to Sarah for not being able to talk during my marathon or half marathon paced efforts! We continued on for another couple of miles

9:13 / 9:27. And I took a gel to see me through.  As we were crossing the causeway, we finally stopped to take some pictorial evidence of us being there:

Sarah is BEHIND the camera... She's not a ghost!

We plodded through the final couple of miles, the photographic breather meant I could pick up again so we were at 9:18/8:50

In summary, a fast flat route, and excellent prep for Manchester, - Sarah had planned an awesome run, and what's more even though I mentally didn't think I could do that pace, I could, and as a result my long runs and medium long runs since have been completed at a faster pace - still conversational, but not annoyingly slow!

Next. We went to dinner, and I ate everything!!!

 

Yup, EVERYTHING