I had planned the run today quite meticulously but had to change the route yesterday due to traffic concerns surrounding the busyness (that doesn't look right but the spell check has no issues with it) of my planned route for my 10 mile milestone run in Week 8 of my current training programme (Bupa).
The programme will hopefully see me through to competing in my first half marathon (Salisbury Half Marathon in October), but more importantly for me to just reach the distance (13.1 miles) in the hope that shorter runs will become easier, faster and perhaps more importantly...fun! That was my aim at Week 1 anyway, but more on that in later posts.
Anyway the day of the run came (i run at lunchtimes from work) and right from the start I wasn't comfortable:
My pace was down from my previous long runs and the heat (and I thought summer was over) was quite unbearable at times with not enough shade patches to shelter. Then the hills came, and the 'rare' stitches for me and they didn't stop...and it was one particularly nasty hill 7 miles later that didn't want to level out where I met with the Wall.
After that, the final 3 miles saw me limp across the finishing line. My pace slowed by about a minute/mile and I ended up completing the 10 miles in 1hr 57 minutes. I did push myself more in the last 1/2 mile to try and finish under 2 hrs which I succeeded in doing so that is some comfort to take from this experience.
I've since uploaded my run (GPS tracked via my Android Phone) checked my graph on Endomondo and counted 8 stop starts in that final 3 mile stretch which is something I have never done before (walking in a run). I tried to keep going as my breathing was fine (not bad for an asthmatic after 90 minutes on my feet) and for a change there was no major pain or aches but I felt completely drained of energy and the will/drive to continue had left me!
This is the first time this has happened to me in 13 months of running as I prefer to run all the way through a run with no walking unless a stitch comes along, some gravel finds its way into my shoes or to give way to some troublesome cars when crossing roads, but it didn't work out that way this time around.
Its even stranger when I managed to run nearly 9 miles a couple weeks ago quite well with no such 'Wall' in the way, although I think the weather today and the Hilly/undulating route played a huge part in zapping all my energy so I'm hopeful in the coming weeks that I will be able to Edge around the Wall.
....Anyway I read that the average reader has a 96 second attention span when reading Blogs so I'm off to watch some TV to relax, I may revisit this Blog later to tweak the detail and if its not too long add some more detail as hopefully I can learn from this experience to prevent such re occurrences in the future.
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