Run to the Beat

...or perhaps a more appropriate title may have been "run in silence" or even just "run in the rain", both would have been more in keeping with the first running of this event this year. We had been promised a host of bands playing at every mile around this, otherwise uninteresting, course around Greenwich area of London. On the day, there were hardly any bands playing, the rain just came down hard and the pan flat course ended up being a hilly one. With my training run total standing at a hefty 0km since the Bristol Half, I was quite aware that this was not going to be the best of races.

Still, ever the optimist, I set the Garmin up to run the same speed as the Bristol, hence getting me in in about 82 minutes. I think that on this occasion, I managed to stay with my virtual buddy for about 5 miles, but some harsh hills and sore legs soon meant that he was running off into the distance. I had started way too fast on this one and I was paying the price. From about mile 6 to the end, it was just a miserable time. The rain and wind showed no signs of letting up and my legs just felt increasingly painful.

In the end, I managed to get home in 1:26 which is a whole 7 minutes slower than my best time. Running certainly always has the ability to make you realise that you can't just come along and pull good results out of the bag. You need to do the training and, for these longer races, you need those miles in your legs. The job should be settling down soon and then I hope to be back on the training regime again...to be fair, I was in work until 2:30 on the morning of this race. I have the Kingston 16 mile race next week...that will be my longest run and I don't think I am even going to get one training run in between now and then.