43km Sunday

I’ll immediately hold my hands up and admit that I didn’t run all 43k in one go. What a fraud.

I had to split it into a 35km and an 8km later in the day but that made it more interesting in some ways. I’ll let you be the judge of how interesting it actually was.

I’ve not often gone through my long run routine (I mean food, drink, timings rather than left, right, left etc) but, if not just as a reminder to myself, I thought it worth posting.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I try to do my long runs early on a Sunday then I can be back and showered before the day with my lovely family really gets going. This last Sunday I reached a dilemma: I knew I had to do about 40k. I usually allow about an hour for every 10k but I had to be back and showered by 9:00 to go out with family and friends. It doesn’t take a lot of maths to work out my scheduled start time would have been offensively early. I’m talking 4s.

So as not to offend my entire moral framework I decided leaving at 5am was as early as anyone could possibly justify and I’d just get as far as I would by 8:30. The answer was 35km.

I returned to my trusty nutrition of jelly babies for the first time in a long long time for this one with a banana at halfway. Aiming for 2 jelly babies with every km that passed kept me pretty well on track too. I always veer towards the science for nutrition and 2 JBs per km keeps me on about 200 calories an hour. Whether it’s just psychological or not, it does me fine. See, look how happy I looked pre-halfway-banana:

By the time I reached my usual dying legs point if 28 or 29kms my legs were actually holding out ok. Maybe, just maybe, I’m getting used to this.

Amway, 8:30am arrived and 35km clocked up, duty called so I came in from the rain. Was that all for the day? No. Way. Mate. I needed 40k.

Much later on post darkness, I just needed to wrap thus one up. Kids in bed and a brief gap in proceedings at home meant I could finish this one off.

With 35kms in my legs, very gusty winds and rain in my face, this was possibly the weirdest run I’ve done. You can even tell from the pic it was a pretty wild evening:

Why so weird then? Clearly I could barely feel my legs as my own after their morning escapades but add the wind blowing me all over the place and the rain numbing my face, I could feel virtually none of the usual senses that help me judge how my run is going. Like I was running with someone else’s legs. 8kms trudging and weaving later I called it a day satisfied to have cleared a marathon distance for the day. I just wonder whether it would have felt so odd if I’d have just run the full 43k in one go first thing.

We’ll never know but at least I wouldn’t feel such a fraud saying I’d run 43km on Sunday!