Better Late Than Never, Comrades!

This months Runner’s World dropped through our door this lunchtime. What did I find on page 78? Secrets Of Endurance – an ultra training guide! Better late than never eh? They recommend a 3 week taper, so always keen to have someone else to blame for my mistakes, that will be the length of my taper. That makes this my last hard week of training.

12:42 3 miles 22:07

1 7:21 2 7:28 3 7:19  Average 7:23 min/miles

I was meeting Boyracer and Crazyboy for a run from the gym tonight, but my legs felt a bit stiff when I got up this morning. DOMS are so annoying (Delayed Onset of Muscular Soreness – usually surfacing two days after hard effort), even though in relative terms the Edinburgh Marathon wasn’t a hard effort, I still ran 26.2 miles and my legs were feeling it this morning. So a wee trot to ease the muscles (and gain some extra miles on my last hard week) was called for. 

I drove around to the Woodland path, rather than running there, so that I could do the whole run on the trail. I didn’t wear my tubigrip for the first time and the ankle felt fine. I’ve never really measured this trail, despite running it several times. A whole lap (one big and one small circuit) was 1.44 miles, whilst one complete big lap was exactly one mile (future mile repeats training spot!). Anyway I had a nice easy tootle round, bothered only by the dust that the wind was blowing up. I didn’t see another soul and it was great. I also officially love my Asics Trabucos!

19:11 5.36 miles 37:54

1 7:10 2 7:11 3 7:19 4 7:16 5 6:43 .36 2:15  Average 7:05 min/miles

Back in my road shoes, and back to the roads. I was there first as always, but the guys weren’t far behind and we were soon off up the hill towards Pollock Park. The wind was really quite strong over the first mile,  and the second, and the third… “it’ll be behind us if we go through the park first”, said Boyracer. No it won’t. It’ll change direction and be back in our faces for the second half! …and the fourth, and the fifth…

Crazyboy was struggling a little. Not only is he just returning from injury, but he has also been plagued with illness over the last week. Still he hung on in there until a mile or so to go and is well on the way to being his oldself. Running on the WHW on Sunday will do him good. It’ll be a little light relief from pounding the pavements and constantly trying to run faster than the last time he ran.

I wasn’t the only one who ran earlier today. As if to always out do me, Boyracer had already done a 7 mile run with a friend from work. He tells me it was only about 8 min/miles though. He also tells me that the reason for his two runs a day routine is in preparation for being my support runner on the WHW on 21st June. He’s also been doing hill session especially. Do you think he realises that I’ll be practically walking by the time he’s running with me?    

I’ve got some good runs planned for the rest of the week. Tomorrow night, a group of WHWRers are meeting at 10pm to run from Milngavie to Drymen, with the option of running back again. This gives us a chance to replicate race conditions and run this route in the dark. On Sunday I’m running the 35 miles from Bridge Of Orchy to Fort William that I missed because of my injured ankle the other week. Pete is again giving up his time to support me on route, and Crazyboy is going to run some sections with me – thanks to both in advance. Other than that, I’m just going to do a few steady runs, and aim for 70 or 80 miles for the week.

Runner’s World also contains an article on South Africa’s 55 mile Comrades Marathon (www.comrades.com). Now that’s definitely got me thinking…