When I started this run I felt awful, I'd been in Winchester for work on the Thursday and Friday which was an hour and a half drive each way as well as requiring me to carry many boxes of invoices about. Add in the nightmare of getting out of Winchester's one way system on a Friday night and I didn't get home till 20 past 7. I was out the front door by 25 to 8, heading off to walk across the fields and onto my usual route up the Down's Link.
At the quarter mile point it was not looking good, I felt really fatigued but drawing on my experience of running with Emma in Cambridge, I decided to finish it off even if the time would be painfully slow. Fortunately at .8 of a mile, when I crossed the road through Slinfold, I was feeling much better and the pace was down to 9:20 min/mile.
The plan was to do the first 3 miles at an easy pace, and then take it up to half marathon pace for the last mile. At the moment that means a 185bpm Heart rate, though I didn't want to take the pace much below 7:30 in order to protect my still healing calf. I got a couple of quick stabs of pain in the early part of the 3 mile easy interval but it seemed to settle through the middle section so I went for it.
The last mile was completed in an average pace of 7:14 min/mile, with an average HR of 184. More than the numbers was the feeling. I'd forgotten how good it felt to run fast, the thump of feet on ground as the world rushes past you, just me, an empty track and the watch. Good times.
98 miles to go...
Distance: 4.00 miles
Time: 35 minutes 53 seconds
Pace: 08:58 min/mile
Average HR: 162
Map: Here
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