A little secret, new shoes and an update on my goals

Well, that's a long title.  I have been thinking all evening about what to blog about as I have so many little things to say, and that I've been thinking about in relationship to my running, so, I thought I'd say them all.

First, my new shoes arrived yesterday.  A particularly painful sports massage yesterday confirmed that my legs have been taking the impact rather than my running shoes for quite some time, so my shiny new Nike lunar eclipse got their first outing this evening for my interval training, where I had to wear my head torch rather than my sunglasses.  They definitely provided a nice amount of cushioning, and aside from needing to adjust the lacing, I think they will do nicely for my half marathon on Sunday.  The intervals were 5x400m with 90s rest.  I decided to walk the rest intervals tonight, so I could properly work hard at speed.  Can't tell you the paces right now, as I can't log on to garminconnect, but they were all around 6:45, except for the 4th, which was 7:01.

An update on goals.  Well, the major open goal for this year is to complete 1000 miles of running.  I am currently on 690, so I require fairly consistent training of 21 miles per week or thereabouts to achieve it.  Now I've realised how tight the goal is, I have a new dedication to my training, which certainly wained a bit once the possibility of running Bournemouth marathon went away.  I think a good one for next year might be to reach 50 parkruns run.  I've done 6 so far, and will have an opportunity to add to that before the turn of the year.  I'll keep thinking about that one.

And now the secret... I've locked down my spring marathon and entered the Greater Manchester Marathon, which will be on 6th April.  It's a fast flat course, and will hopefully give me the best chance of going for that London GFA, which is why the new shoes were so necessary, becoming my training partners at least for the remaining 310 miles I will run this year as I begin to gear up for marathon training.  I have devised a schedule which takes elements of Galloway's and Higdon's training plans.  Doing a lot of work on form for much of this year, before getting into high mileage weeks through the spring.  I'm looking forward to this journey as its one I start fully fit off the back of many pbs.  So hopefully I'll be smashing that marathon pb too!

Dedham 10k run

Ello all, well I thought I'd better write something as the races are where we see the results of the training and whether its working, but I don't feel like I have an awful lot to say, as I was really working as hard as I could on this race.  So focused on running that I didn't really see anything apart from the road and other runners.

This was a nice late starting race, at 11am, so although I woke up at a usual early time of 7am, I rolled over and went back to sleep until 8:30.  I had been worried it would be a washout, but actually it was a bright sunny, though cool, morning.  I got up and yay, I could have warm porridge.  So much easier as a pre race fuel than trying to find something cold that's easily digestible yet provides enough energy.  I had that together with a cup of tea, a cup of oj, and sipped on 500ml water with an SiS hydro tablet in it.  I felt a bit dehydrated after the couple of gin and tonics the night before.

I had to pick up my race number from race hq, so was getting a bit irate when David wasn't ready to leave when I was, as it was cutting into my warm-up, and I knew a decent warm up could make all the difference in a race this short.

Still, I wasted more time trying to figure out which queue to get into.

Is it normal to label the alphabet backwards? Or to have to go to the left of a sign to be in the right queue?  Because of the backward alphabet, I just couldn't figure out which section I would be in.

When queuing for the toilet, I realised this was the field where I started my Essex way run out to Harwich a few weeks back ( I saw the way mark on a post).  At 10:45 they started calling runners to the start- damn! I was hoping to warm up.  I had a quick run around the field before going down to the start.  At least this would hopefully be enough that I would be working aerobically at the start of the race, rather than 5 minutes in.  I saw lots of the local club runners, though not many from Colchester.  I noted there was one girl from Colchester Harriers though, and I wondered how I would do compared to her.  I lost her in the start area though.

As usual, I started a bit too far back for my intended pace, and spent the first half mile dodging people trying to get up to pace of 7:50.  At times during the first mile, the garmin said my average was7:40, but there was a steep uphill toward the end of that first mile, which tempered it a bit to 7:55.  I had to go faster if I was going to get some time in hand, as I thought I would need if I wanted a pb.  I knew the last mile was downhill, so that would help. But I also knew the course was fairly hilly.  The 2nd mile was mainly downhill, and when garmin said 7:20ish, I was scared I was overcooking it.  Bt this was my last10k for a while, and my pb was only 2 months old.  If I had any chance of breaking it, I had to push really hard! The second mile came in at 7:23.

This is where the course started to get interesting.  The hills in this course were mainly steep and longish, rather than rolling.  To add to this, there was a long section alongside a field (one of our cycle routes too) that was incredibly windy.  I still felt like over taking people but then there was a strong gust, and I decided drafting 2 taller and wider men was a better idea.  They were going 7:46 pace, so I decided to stick with them for the rest of the race.  This plan was slightly scuppered when I attempted to drink water from a cup without stopping at the halfway point.  I tried to swallow, but ended up breathing it, coughed and choked and it was dribbling down my face.  This is where David shoved the camera in my face... Great!  Those 2 men had got about 5 metres ahead now, and There was a really really steep hill! I started to have doubts and thought about walking, but then remembered its only another 5k and a walking stop would probably negate pb potential.  I was running hard anyway, so I didn't want to waste the energy expended doing a hard 10k, if I wasn't going to fight for that time.  I still had a few seconds in hand from the 7:23 mile 2, so I gritted my teeth, started breathing deeper and pumped my arms.  I managed to pass a couple of people going up that hill, but the men I had been drafting before were still well ahead.

At the 7k mark, there was another drinks station.  I could feel my breathing was getting tough and my hr was. Really high, so I thought a little walk break and some water would be a good plan.  I walked a long time before actually drinking it, as I didn't want to risk it when my breathing was so heavy.  This did give me decent energy to start running again.  Now it was about catching people.  I'm sad to say in that last 3k, I only passed 6 people and 3 passed me- one in the finish funnel.  I think that gives an idea of the quality of runners in this race- they had clearly all paced it well, so I couldn't catch them.  Still they dragged me to the finish strong, and I crossed the line in 48:05, a 97 second pb for me!  On a hilly and windy course I'm most impressed with this, and also curious what I could have done on a flatter race, or if I had carried a water bottle with me and not lost time at those drinks stations choking or walking.

Afterward David met me, and first we stuck my legs in the air to drain them a bit- I really had pushed hard as they were showing the signs of cramping I get at the end of a marathon! Then we went for a tea and scone in one of the Dedham tea rooms, whilst we waited for our car to become free of the race.

So the paces:

Mile 1: 7:55

Mile 2: 7:23

Mile 3: 7:45

Mile 4: 8:05

Mile 5: 8:01

Mile 6: 7:15

Last 0.24 - 7:08

The uneven splits are completely acceptable once you see the elevation profile:

Chip time 48:05- really happy with this as race time prediction services now suggest a 3:42 marathon time.  So I should probably be looking at faster than 8:20 pace for my half marathon next weekend.

Fuelling the long run

I am always delighted to find out that people are reading my blog.  I find that the writing of it gives me extra motivation to train, as well as figure out what to change for optimum performance.

One of my friends and a reader of this blog is currently training for his first marathon, and asked me to put up a post about fuelling for his long runs.  Little did he know, I have recently completed a course in Sports Nutrition, and am happy to provide personalised advice.  If you're interested in this, you can contact me at angela.isherwood.health@gmail.com 

So, marathon training.

I like to think of marathon training as having 3 sides of a triangle, all of which are equally important.  These are:

1) actually putting in the training, the hard miles

2) recovery and injury prevention- this includes strength and stretching work as well as massages, ice baths, compression clothing etc

3) nutrition- what you are eating and drinking

If you are training for a marathon, you are likely to be running significantly more than you ever have done, and for your first one, your body will feel it.  The nutrition side of things can really help feed into your recovery, allowing your muscles to rebuild stronger, and ensuring you get a wide variety of micronutrients to help protect your immune system.  Intense marathon training can cause your immune system to become depleted, so anything that can help counter this effect is worth doing.

The athlete's diet.  

For marathon training, by far the most important macronutrient is carbohydrates.  Whilst general health guidelines recommend your macronutrients take the following proportions:

Carbohydrate: 50-60% Fat: 25-30% (no more that 35%) and Protein: 10-15%

A marathon runner should look to ensure their proportion of their diet formed from carbohydrate is at least 60% or 5-7grams of carbs per kg of body weight per day, and that their proportion of diet from fat is on the low end of that range- no more than 25%.

Where should the carbs come from?  Starchy carbs- potatoes, rice, pasta will probably end up making up the bulk of your diet, but you should also ensure you get a full rainbow of fruits and vegetables- as well as providing carbohydrate, this is where you get your micronutrients which will have various other beneficial effects such as protecting your immune system, preventing joint inflammation, preventing muscle soreness etc.  if your typical diet is meat and 2 veg, where meat makes up the main feature of all your meals, you may want to adjust this.  Whereas the protein is important, the fat content in meat can really mess with your optimal nutrition balance, as well as leaving you fuller, which may prevent you from consuming enough carbohydrates to fuel your training.

Fuelling on the long run.

Typically most runners will do their long run at the weekend, which makes it an ideal scenario to prepare for their race.  Especially in your first marathon, I would use some of the long runs to practice a race fuelling strategy.  This involves the pre-race carbo load, fuelling during the race, and post-race recovery.

During the pre-race carbo load, for a marathon I would spend at least 2 days prior to the race, possibly 3, aiming to top up the glycogen stores in my muscles- I would be in my taper, so a much reduced training load, and I would ensure that upto 85% of my food intake was carbohydrate.  In the day before, I might also look to reduce fibre to avoid any tummy problems during the race, so this might mean a day of pasta, jacket potatoes, bagels with jam/honey etc.  generally this high GI, high sugar diet is not recommended, but prior to a marathon, you want to ensure your body has as much energy stored as possible.  I would consume this in 6 small meals, as well as sipping on squash and water throughout the day.  For training, you may want to modify this to just the day before your long run, and perhaps only practise it for 1 in 3 long runs, so you can start to understand the effect it has on you.

During the run/race, we use our nutrition strategy to prevent the onset of 'the wall' this is where glycogen stores become completely depleted and the body starts to metabolise fat for energy- this is a much slower process and results in slower running.  My personal strategy consists of a combination of the following.  I mix up a 500ml drinks bottle of SiS go energy drink, and put in a teaspoon of chia seeds, I carry SiS Go electrolyte gels, including 1 with caffeine.  I used to use lucozade gels, but they are very sweet and sickly and you have to drink loads of water with them, whereas the SiS gels, although bigger to carry, do not require you to consume water in order to be able to digest them.  Once I have started the run, I will consume my energy drink and/or water to thirst, and I will take an energy gel every 45 minutes.  Typically if you are well trained and going at the right pace, you wouldn't feel as if you need energy at 45 minutes in, but the fact is, there is virtually no way you can replace all the energy you are using by running, so you are implementing a strategy to try and prevent 'empty' on the carb stores.  I'm a female of 60kg and this works for me.  If you weigh significantly more, or significantly less, or have more or less running experience, you may wish to adjust frequency of energy intake accordingly.  The caffeine gel is the one I take when I've run approximately 2 thirds to 3 quarters of my run or race, and this is to give me a bit of extra energy when it's potentially really hurting, but the end is still far away.  There are many other products in the market.  Some people use jelly babies and squash.  If you are going to make up your own squash, rather than buy a commercial sports product, it may be worth adding a pinch of salt to the drink to help you replace electrolytes and prevent dangerously low electrolyte levels in your blood.  This is especially important if you sweat a lot.

After the run/race- this is really really important for recovery and if you do nothing else I've suggested, do this.  Consume a snack that is approx 4/5 carb, 1/5 protein.  Examples include, 500ml chocolate milk, 2 slices toast with peanut butter and 250ml fruit juice.  Whatever works for you.  And rehydrate! This will help clear the waste products in your muscles.  The snack ideally is consumed within 30 minutes of finishing, which is why the liquid versions may be more palatable.  And have a proper meal perhaps 2 hours later, once you've bathed, stretched etc.

Bacchus Half Marathon

This race was amazing and I would commend it to anyone.  Much of the week leading up to the race, I had been suffering from ibs, something I had never experienced before, nor want to again!  On the drive to Surrey on Friday night, the dartfford crossing on the M25 was closed for 7 hours due to a security scare, but we weren't aware when we left home,  so ended up sitting in a tailback for 4 hours. Our expected arrival at 8:30pm became 1:30am.  All in all, not the best preparation for a half marathon.  All of this, together with the fact I have two 'A' races in the coming weeks meant I was going to use this race as a training run.  I would take the first 8 miles steady, with 4 miles at half marathon pace (8:20mm) and then I would take advantage of all the fun part of the race after- wine drinking whilst running!  This was a copycat of the famous Medoc marathon, so everybody was encouraged to wear fancy dress, and wine was served from the Denbies estate, which is the largest vineyard in England, established in 1986.  David dressed as a giant banana... I dressed as a TR24 competitor, as my name was on that shirt :)

The race started at midday, so there was plenty of time beforehand to potter around the gift shop and have a second breakfast, of an iced bun.  David tried on some yellow sunglasses in his banana suit and the man selling them took a picture and said it would appear on the bloc website/Facebook page.

I started with David and enjoyed looking at all the costumes.  We all know I like elephants, so I was particularly pleased to see a man sized elephant,

but David wouldn't let me go and give him a cuddle, so I had to stick to cuddling bananas (who cuddles bananas? Weird, right?).  I started toward the back of the field with David as I wanted to ease into it.  A third of a mile at 14mm pace and I got irritated and ran off- clearly lots of people ahead of us were planing on walking this one.  I managed to get ahead of most of them in the first mile or so, and got up to a 10mm pace, which with averaging was probably more a 9mm pace after the 14.  This was nice, we were going steady and I got into a rhythm.  There was a slight uphill around 1.5 miles, but everyone around was running steady, then there was a downhill on a slightly rocky path clearly someone ahead who doesn't like downhill had stopped to walk, and as the path was so narrow, this held everybody up.  I was thinking why aren't you using gravity, surely running downhill is much easier than running uphill, but I guess I've had a lot more off road experience than a lot who were doing this race.

Eventually got past them and joined a footpath running across a field.  This is when I decided to up the pace for 2 miles.  At times it was difficult to keep up as the path wasn't conducive to overtaking, but I managed mile 3 at 8:15 and mile 4 at 8:33, given the off road and overtaking issues, I was very pleased with this.  I think the rain that started at mile 3 and continued for 20 minutes really helped this.  Back down to a steady pace, and some of the people I had overtaken started to overtake me, I wondered if they were thinking (she went off too fast) as I often do if I catch someone up who's passed me so early in the race... Little did they know that was my intention!

5 and 6 were steady again, and I did stop to take on some electrolyte drink.  I really struggle to drink from that bottle at the half marathon pace, so I need to find a good drinking strategy for Ipswich.  Hopefully it will be that much cooler that I don't need to worry about drinking so much.

7 and 8 and back up to pace.  I managed 8:15 for 7, then my garmin started bleeping at me that it was running out of battery.  Mile 8 and I blew up.  The course started going significantly steeper uphill and I just couldn't maintain pace.  Now I look back at garmin connect, and the first 8 miles were pretty much all uphill, so no wonder I was tired by this point.   I switched the garmin off when it clicked past 8 miles and took it easy from here, stopping to take photos of the beautiful scenery.

At the top of this very steep hill, I guess it was 8 and 3/4 miles, I stopped at the fuel station, first to fill my bottle with water, then to gorge on some orange slices- there was an amazing selection of food! And finally to sample some wine.  

This was the rose hill Rose and I had 2 of the sample shots. I waited up here for quite some time, hopefully I could meet up with my giant banana, and do the rest with him, but up on the hill, exposed to the wind and having done a hard 8 miles, i started to get pretty cold, so decided to get on with the rest of the race.  Before this, I had been thinking about running hard for the whole thing, but I hadn't prepared by taking on extra fuel, plus, with my illness and tiredness, I thought it best not to push it.  I took the next 5 miles really really easy, walking when I felt like it and rehydrating, as well as enjoying everybody's costume.  I really started to find it difficult on mile 10 and 11.  This is certainly the point where a strategic energy gel at miles 5 and 9 would have helped me.

The fuel stop at mile 10 had red wine- I didn't take notice of anything else.  This was not great to run on, and with my slightly dehydrated running self, I didn't enjoy it as much as I normally enjoy a red wine, so only had one taster.  The last drinks station at mile 12 had sparkling wine. This was absolutely delicious! I wish I could have had lots more of it, but as I had said David could drink as much As he wanted and I would drive after, I decided not to.  I wish I had remembered the name so I could buy some.

Much of the last mile was downhill.  After some nice dirt paths you came out to a hard concrete road alongside the vineyard.  The steepness meant it was very hard on your feet running down hill, soi jumped onto the grass.  I started winding up for the finish now, and had loads in me.  Wish my garmin was on so I could see pace, but I went flying past everyone I saw in this home stretch, and around the corner for a sprint finish.  At the end, I was greeted by superman (a grey haired superman)- i think he must have been the race director.  This was a really nice touch- he shook our hands as we finished.  Then I went to have my timing chip removed and the lady who removed it noticed a lot of pieces of plants attached to my socks and started removing them for me- how lovely.  Next was picking up the medal, a nice chunky silver medal with giant 13.1 on it, and the t shirt.  Bright yellow technical T.  Unfortunately a man's t, so another night dress for me rather than running top.  Then wow, what a spread!  All sorts of fruit-I had a chunk of pineapple, my favourite.  There were lots of cakes too, which I think were homemade.  It had become quite overcast so I went for the hot drinks stand and had a coffee- free tea and coffee!  Again a really nice touch.  I finished in 2:21- given I did up to 8 miles in 1:16 you have some idea of how easy I took the last 5 miles :)

I was getting really cold now, so went to get my baggage, and put on David's joggers and my waterproof ride London top.  This helped for a while but then it got really really really cold and started pissing down with rain.  Some of the full marathon runners were starting to come through the finish, but there was no sign of my giant banana and I started to get worried.  Eventually after about an hour, he started running through the finish chute.  It was really raining hard now, but the top of the banana costume was keeping him dry and warm.  We got in the queue for the hog roast, and a full glass of wine and gorged on that.

This was a fantastic event and great value.  At first I thought £46 was a bit much for a half marathon, but with free parking, as much food as you want, as much wine as u can drink on course, and free hot drinks, it was really good value, especially with that hog roast lunch.  I think the cost to enter the full marathon was the same, and I will definitely go for that next time.  The course was challenging, but not as impossible as off-road races can be, so I think it would be a nice one to amble around in 5 hours, enjoying the food and wine along the way:)

Decisions

After 8 months of fairly consistent training. I'm very glad to see I've made massive improvements.  Whereas I had done a few races in the past.  Each were isolated events with de-training/ de-conditioning following them.  This is why in 5 years I never improved my 10k time, for example, until now.  What it seems like is I'm riding the wave that beginner runners usually ride if they stick with it.  I always suspected I had the capacity for faster times, if only I found the time to do the requisite training.  And what I am even more sure of is that I absolutely love running.  I'm in it for the long haul.

Why am I blathering on about this?  Well, I want to set myself the rather lofty goal of setting a London Marathon Good for Age (GFA) qualifying time in my next marathon in the Spring.  For me, this means 3 hours 45 minutes.  If you plug some of my recent race times into race calculators, the 5k says a 3:35 (BQ) time is achievable, and the 10k says 3:45 is achievable, though only just, at the moment.  I shall be doing a 10k and half marathon next month which will hopefully help to cement the possibility in my mind of being able to achieve that GFA time.

I'm lucky in that after 22nd September, I have no more races in the pipeline to get in the way of this goal, so I can knuckle down to training, and here is where the dilemma lies.  I have 3 potential training plans.  One by Jeff Galloway which is in his how to qualify for Boston book.  It follows a 29 week build up and so I would have to start following it at the end of September.  One is the much revered Pfizinger and Douglas plan from their book Advanced Marathoning, however, each time I've studied the plan I've had reservations about how I would fit in the mid-week sessions.  The third is to follow a Hal Higdon plan- I followed his intermediate plan for my last marathon and it did me well- perhaps this time I would step up to intermediate 2.  At the moment I'm leaning toward starting the Jeff Galloway plan in September, and then switching to the Hal Higdon plan when there are 18 weeks to go, but still keeping some of the more technical aspects of Jeff's plan, like the cadence drills, acceleration gliders and magic mile time trials.

Anyone have any thoughts?  Other than the one about me being crazy?

A double on leaden legs

So, 2 days after a 20 mile run, and 1 day after a fairly painful sports massage, I didn't sensibly reassess my training plan, and instead stuck to it.  3 miles easy in the morning.  9x400m intervals in the evening:

So, 1st session in the morning was 3 miles easy- avg pace 9:48mm, then I played with my new kettlebells for a while after.

The second was a session I did a few weeks ago, with an extra repeat  9x400m with 90s rest.  I decided to jog some of the rest intervals, but looking at my times, its obvious my legs are tired, as they were much slower than last time I did it!

I did 4.66 miles in total, including the warm up and cool down, and interval paces were as follows:

Interval 1: 6:34

jog

Interval 2: 6:57

walk

Interval 3: 7:15

jog

Interval 4: 7:20

walk

Interval 5: 7:10

walk

Interval 6: 7:02

jog

Interval 7: 6:53

walk

Interval 8: 7:25

jog

Interval 9: 7:02

In the cooldown I felt my calf really trying to tighten, so I stopped and walked home- didn't want to risk a new tear   so these paces are quite a bit slower.  Wonder whether I should have listened to my friend's advice to have an extra rest day before doing speed work, or whether I will still realise some benefit from having done this session even if the speed isn't as much as it was last time I did it.

Yesterday I was having high hopes that I could go for a London GFA qualifying time in my Spring marathon if I'm sensible about my training from now, but today's session has knocked my confidence a bit  so I'm doing more training for Bacchus half, with a glass of red 

An accidental 20 mile run: kissing gates and neigh neighs

So, after a week of zero running, I felt terrible.  There was no reason for no running, other than feeling tired all the time, which probably could have been fixed by going for a run.   It was a pretty busy week, and so, no runs happened, and then at the weekend I was exhausted.  I decided that rather than do a 10 mile section of the essex way, I would instead get up early on the bank holiday Monday to do stages 8, 9 and 10.  By my calculations, approximately 18 miles.  Although, now I look at the distances, perhaps it was 19.1.

The fiance dropped me off in Dedham where there was all hustle and bustle for the bank holiday, an antiques show.  I walked the first section, whilst I was waiting for the garmin to find satellites, which took forever!

I started the run and within 100 metres, a kissing gate.  Turns out, these were a feature of this section.  That and horses.  I had read in someone else's blog t'other day about a disease that some of the horses in this area had, and so I was a bit concerned about getting near them.  This meant that the run became a bit of a run, walk slow past horses, stop to open kissing gate and walk thru, scan the new field for livestock, continue running.  It was a rather frustrating run because of all the stop start, and despite the beauty of the countryside, I was happy when I got to Bradfield, as it seemed the instructions showed fewer kissing gates - I was closer to the coast now, so the land was flatter and therefore the farming tended to be arable, so no need for these gates - its not like the corn or the manglewurzls would escape.  Though, that would make a pretty good cartoon I suppose.   Once I eventually got out of the fields, there was a little run down to the river Stour, and on to Mistley Towers.  They were slightly underwhelming, as I was expecting some giant gothic structure, however on reading the information sheet, it was quite interesting- they were towers of a church that has ceased to exist, but the towers remain.  Just before the towers, I caught the attention of a chap, who wanted to tell me if I was running the essex way, I was going the wrong way.  Now, as a geographer, I'm pretty good at following written instructions, especially when they give clear instructions about the contours.  I convinced him I was going the right way, and we had a bit of a chat.  He said he had started the Colchester Harriers, and that now, he runs Ultras.  He had apparently completed the length of the Essex Way in 12 hours! Wow, that made me feel pretty bad.  By the time I got to the end of this 8 mile section, 2 hours had passed!

In Bradfield, I sat on a bench to have a gel, and I spent a rather long time trying to find which way to go at the start.  The instructions say to start at the community centre and then say to run along the path 150m with the church on your left.  Problem is, not knowing the village, I had no idea where the church was, and it wasn't in view from the start point, so this was a bit of a waste of time.  Eventually I got going again though.

This section was Bradfield to Ramsey.  After running along a busy road for a while, this was all about horses.  There were so many horses around, and horsey people moving their horses from one paddock to another.  I slowed down to a walk so I didn't startle them.  Eventually, started running through an RSPB protection area/woods, and then out across more fields.  It had been quite a long uphill slog, so I stopped to walk a while, to get my breath back.  Needed to stretch my quads as well as my knees were grumbling.  I heard a runner coming up behind me, and he asked, are you doing the essex way!  I explained that I'm just doing it for fun today, but not doing the race, and that I had started in Dedham.  He would be doing this section of the relay next week, which is only a 5.4 mile section, so seemed quite impressed, though I had to give him a kick up the butt to start running again - I was resting with another 6(i thought, but actually 8) miles to go.  He only had 1.  By the time I passed through another horsey field, and a windmill, I met him on his way back.  I suppose he was doing an out and back.

So Ramsey, and the Castle Pub was looking very enticing, and it was rather sunny.  I could so have had a pint, but was really concerned about the time I was making.  18 miles ought to have taken me 3 hours- perhaps 3:30 with the  more difficult terrain.  I was supposed to be arriving in Harwich for lunctime.  I looked at my phone, and had a message from my driver about how long I was taking! charming!  I figured I had about an hour left, now, so told him.

The last leg was quite a nice run.  through flat fields, although, unfortunately, some had not cleared the footpath properly, and there was one where I had to go around the edge rather than diagonally across, only to run up a bank onto the seawall and run back on myself.  However, now I was on the seawall, I knew I was on the home straight, or so I thought.  It was quite windy up on the sea wall, but the ground was solid, and I could actually get into a stride now.  There were several sheep eating grass up on the seawall, and I gave several quite a scare as I got close to them.  The last one I passed, however, had nerves of steel, and didn't budge as I ran past.

Eventually the grass turned to tarmac, and then a carpark next to beach-huts.  Yay! I must be in Harwich.  I was at 17.6 miles, so not long to go, however, I still had half a page of instructions.  The instructions should have just said run along the seafront for 2 miles, because that's basically what I did.  About a mile along the seafront, I was enjoying the sound of the sea, and the waves, and the view of a little bit of beach - the tide was very high, and I saw a chap come out of the sea in a wetsuit- he looked at me as if he had such recognition, I thought he must know me, possibly from Parkrun.  Anyhoo, he knew I was running the essex way, and encouraged me that there wasn't too far to go now.  I wished him luck for the race next week.

I went around the headland, and now, I could see the huge huge port.  Giant cranes and piles and piles of containers.  It must be a very important port for goods from Europe.  Eventually you pass a lighthouse, which has become a maritime museum, and then an old crane to the left.  This is where you turn away from the sea and run inland for only about 100 metres.  Here, my fiance ran alongside me and raced me to the finish, but I was only at 19.84 miles, so I continued running.  I ran a few circles around another lighthouse, and then into the town a bit, then back again, then bleep, 20 miles... Done!  Phew!  Time for fish and chips... however, didn't feel much like fish, so got battered sausage and chips.  I enjoyed the chips, they were really good, but 1 bite of the sausage, and it was dripping with grease, and I'm not sure there was any meat in the sausage, so left that.

All in all, really glad to have completed 20 miles, but not so happy with how long it took.  I know this was down to terrain, gates, and not really knowing where I was going, so Essex Way, its been fun, but you're not the only way, so I'm gonna take a break for a few weeks...