After the blister issues at Milton Keynes and the subsequent time it appeared to be taking for these problems to clear up, I was not looking too good to run Fleet last weekend. The feet had not totally healed but the Compeed plasters did seem to be make running at least bearable to some extent, albeit, I had not tried anything longer than 10k during the two weeks.
So, on Sunday I decided to give it a go and just see if I could make it round in one piece. I set the Garmin off on a pace of 1:23 but I decided that I would see how long I could go without actually looking at the watch. I thought I was going okay, but it was quite obviously far from a stellar performance. I am not really sure what is happening with the running at the moment. Perhaps, it is too long on the treadmill and not enough sessions outside, but I just feel that good running at the moment. Anyway, at about mile 8, the feet started to hurt, what with one Compeed coming off and one on the other foot somewhere else within my shoe. I eventually stopped at about 9 miles and decided to take the socks off and see if I could carry on. For a while the feet were still sore, but things did improve....I ran quite hard through miles 10-11 and then the legs felt pretty sore for the last mile
I eventually came home in 1:27 so not as bad as MK but it does mean that the whole plan of doing some good halves in the early part of the season are kind of out of the window as there are no more on the horizon. TT season kicks off this weekend with a trip to the Sotonia 10.
The good news is, my season has now started, it seems like a such a long time ago that I was racing. The bad news on the other hand, is that the season has started with a race that just went from bad to worse.
I had set myself the target of running a 1:21 at the MK half this year, and although ambitious, I felt relatively confident that I might just sneak under 1:22. The starter holding us for a lot longer than I thought meant that I started off needing to go to the toilet and hence the first 6 miles I spent a lot of time trying to decide if the cost of nipping behind a tree for a wee would be worth the time lost. I decided to give it a miss and carried on for a bit longer...I went through half way dead on target at 40:30 but I knew that I was slowing down a bit. For some reason, I never really felt that great, kind of tired. I think most of that may have been due to the fact that I did some hard work during the week and never really recovered properly and then promptly went out and did a 60 mile bike ride on the Saturday. The ride seemed okay for the first 30 miles but after turning round and realising it was headwind, I quickly lost interest and generally just felt lethargic. Still, I didn't think it would cause too much damage.
At mile 9 in the race, the real problems started, my feet really started to hurt - a lot. I had bought some new socks in the week and these were obviously not for me....I could feel the blisters starting to appear and by mile 11 it felt like someone was scraping the skin off the bottom of my feet. Cue, a final 2 mile run/walk strategy to finally cross the line in 1:30.....not great.
So, I have Fleet half in a couple of weeks time now. Hopefully, I'll be able to have a better day there.
At least the season has finally started...
