Week of August 26th - The one in Cardiff

This week I went for two three mile runs in the morning, but the focus of this post is my big run in Cardiff.  The whole team was there for a weekend away, so on the Sunday we decided to go for a run.  As we’re all at different stages of training, unlike previous group runs, we split into three groups.  Tom and Alan were running together (Another convert to the running bug!), Nick and Weeman were going a bit faster, and as part of my training was going to go 9 miles at race pace.

The run itself started off well, Cardiff is quite a scenic city and very flat, ideal running conditions.  The plan was to run around the bay, the route of which could be seen from our Penthouse apartment (woo, free upgrade) in one of Cardiff’s tallest buildings.  Luckily, we’d been on a long bike ride around the bay the day before, so felt confident that I’d be able to find my way around.  I started off my run a bit quick, around 7 minute pace, but after a couple of miles settled down into a better pace.  I then managed to get to the bay inlet keeping a consistent time.  When I got there however I ran into some navigational difficulties, and took the wrong turn off a roundabout.  This led me out of Cardiff, so had to double back on myself, whilst crossing some triple carriageways (thankfully Sunday morning are very traffic quiet).  All this distraction kept me busy though, so my running was consistent.   I eventually spotted our apartment, and by the time I reached its base, had run 9 miles.  Overall my pace was slightly slower than I would have liked, but not significantly.  I also think that 13 7:30 miles is just out of reach at this point, so am aiming for 7:45 for the half marathon.

Distance: 9.0 miles

Time: 1:10:18

Pace: 7:48 min/mile