Best Laid Plans and Surprises

This Week's Training: 25 miles, 2 x Body Pump, 600m swim, 3 x bike (1hr25 total)

It's been a good week all in all. I'm trying not to think about the fact it's now only TWO WEEKS until the London Marathon. So far so good. My friend Alex is running Brighton next weekend and I really feel for her as she's been poorly and not able to get so many miles under her belt. I'm sure she'll have a blast though and I'm looking forward to hearing all about it.

I was house-sitting for a friend for most of the week so shuffled my training schedule around quite a bit to suit. I did body pump and a bike session before I went over on Tuesday night, failed to do a lunchtime run on Wednesday because of workload but managed it the next day instead. I'd intended to do 8 miles after work on Thursday but thought I'd forgotten my gloves. It had been snowing all day and my hands went numb the day before so thought I'd better not go. Also failed to go out on Friday morning. So best laid plans and all that... my excuse was I didn't think it wise to run the day before a half marathon race and I was doing a swim and bike combo that evening anyway. Turns out I'd had my gloves all along. SIGH.

Before running a four lap half marathon 

Anyway Saturday morning I took part in Bolt Round the Holt in Alice Holt forest. I'd had my eye on this event for at least a year so I was really excited about taking part, not least because it turned out to be a really warm and sunny day. I even got a tan mark on my forehead where my head band was! As ever I'll do a separate review on the event but I really enjoyed it, despite the trail terrain and hills, despite not being allowed to run with music (I don't think I've ever run more than 8 miles without music) and despite it being laps. I've never done a lapped event of that length before but it worked out really well because it meant I passed my parents five times which meant lots of cheering and being spurred on. I came 149th out of 175 and run in 2:16:36... faster than Paris, that was a surprise!

Obligatory post event bling shot

Turns out someone I know from a National Trust working holiday was also running and spotted me, somehow, and tweeted me after the event, which was a really lovely surprise.

The final surprise has been today... I was up for an 8:30 body pump class followed by a 25 minute session on the bike, did the shopping and had a light lunch then went out for another run. I was down for 4 this week but I'd only done two so I knew I had to do one more minimum. Another sunny day made it a joy to go out and I managed 8 miles with some still left in the tank. But what really surprised me was that I averaged 9:30 minutes per mile! Over 8 miles! I don't think I've ever done that before. And it's not exactly flat around here. Long may it continue!