Sunday, June 21, 2009

London Calling

It's been a busy two days already here and I'm exhausted, but that's more down to the obnoxious eight-year old we've brought along with us rather than the running. But that's a different story that won't be told on this blog.

I managed to drag myself out of bed early on Friday. 5 o'clock alarm calls are awfully early, but in summer it's much easier to handle. It's already bright outside, and with the better weather we've generally had over the last few weeks it's not too bad. 18 miles are still a long way, but as long as I don't wear myself out on the climbs, I can manage pretty easily. Somehow the legs felt a lot better than for Wednesday's 15-miler; the hill repeats always seem to leave my legs in pretty decent shape, maybe because the Thursday mileage is the lowest of the week. Anyway, the run went fairly well, and left me on 75.5 miles for the week so far, which meant 24.5 miles over the weekend would give me a 100 mile week. Even with the traveling, that was definitely achievable.

I had thought about getting up early on Saturday, but with our flight leaving at 8:40 we had to be up before 6 o'clock as it was, and I decided against running beforehand. The journey went by without a hitch, we were in our apartment at 1 o'clock, met some friends from our old London days, and by 4 o'clock I got some leave to go out running. Since I had a tempo session in mind I decided against exploring the London roads and went to Ladywell Fields instead. One entire loop was 0.7 miles according to my Garmin; I did 12 of those and with the stretch from and to our house added I came to 11.5 miles. The first 7 or 8 miles went pretty well, I was doing about 6:49 pace and it felt definitely do-able. After that I started to wilt in the hotter temperatures and I felt rather dehydrated. By the time I was back home the pace had dropped to 6:54, which is still a decent enough session. I was a bit disappointed that I had not been able to stay on the first-half pace, though.

With only 13 miles left for a century week I took off early this morning. I did a tour around Southeast London, running past all the 3 houses we had been living in during our 8 years here. For the middle part I went to Dulwich Park, where the race will be held on Wednesday. The course is very flat, there will be no excuse for a slow time. On the way back home I found a trail that I hadn't been on for several years and could not resisting running on it. This left me with a detour that turned out to be much longer than anticipated, and I ended up doing over 2 miles more than planned. After 13 miles my legs were getting increasingly tired, as if they were saying “we've done 100 miles already, what else do you want from us?”. However, I made it home, having completed the biggest week of my running career so far. This week will be easier, like it or not.
19 Jun
18 miles, 2:23:02, 7:57 pace, HR 142
20 Jun
11.5 miles, 1:19:26, 6:54 pace, HR 162
21 Jun
15.25 miles, 2:02:55, 8:04 pace, HR 143
incl. several strides

Weekly Mileage: 102 ¼

8 comments:

  1. congrats on a very impressive weeks training!

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  2. p.s. I never seem to manage more than 26.2 miles when I'm in LONDON!!!

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  3. Well done on your century Thomas! That's a great achievement in itself, but the fact that you managed to do most of it at such inhospitable hours makes it all the more impressive! You deserve to enjoy the rest of your holiday after that!!

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  4. Well done Thomas! I have yet to break the half century mark in a week!

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  5. you made it - well done!! Nice pace by the way on the 11.5 miler

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  6. Great mileage Thomas! I wouldn't worry about the pace for that 11 miler. The body dictates that for sure. Still it was awful fast.

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  7. Congratulations on the 100+ miles, well done. The time you put in now will do you well down the road.

    So, how are you feeling? Lighter, stronger... tired? Enjoy London, I'm envious.

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  8. I thought the last 1/4 was more noteworthy than the first 100 ;)

    You're doing well - hear there's a "heat-wave" in London of 30C. Ha! That's pleasant. Heat-waves start after the 7th day over 35C!

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