100k here we come…

Perhaps the sunshine made me giddy this week, after a winter of grey runs angled slightly into the drizzle and wind. Perhaps stringing together a good streak of runs this week gave me ideas above my station. Either way, on September 7th I’ll be running my first 100k ultra.

This is the perfect time to talk about it now – far enough away that I can still have grand plans without the fear and logistics requirements of any approaching event. It also helps to make sure I get my 54-miler done in April as a bit of a sighter, or rather to make it abundantly clear how much work I need to put in before September.

It is the Thames Path 100k Challenge from London to Henley. No doubt I will talk about this 2 million more times before I do it so that’s all for now. Today’s focus should be all about the sunshine this week.

Look at this, it’s February after all:

I love weeks like this. One of the first weeks of the year when you remember what it felt like back in October time when it wasn’t just dark and cold.

You can run looking forwards and feel the sun on your face. I did get carried away, however, when the sunshine tempted me to run a lunchtime route on trails that are normally strictly May to October trails.

“It’ll be fine,” said my inner voice. “The sun’s been out for 4 hours, it’s bound to have dried up 3 months’ worth of rain”.

Oh sure it will:

Once I’d kicked off the 50kgs of mud from each foot, it was fine. In fact, I genuinely didn’t mind at all. On such a lovely day, I merrily ploughed through the bog up to my ankles. Convincing enough? Nearly everything’s better in the sunshine and running is absolutely one of those things.

I even got a tempo run in this week.

Mon: 7k easy

Wed: 11.5k easy

Thurs: 8k, 6k @4:15/k

Fri: 9.6k easy

I’d planned just an easy week with a long run this weekend but Thursday was such a nice day, I Just felt like going a bit quicker.

Told you the sunshine sends me giddy. Not so much that I’d be hasty and enter a 100k race though. Oh, wait…