20 miles!!!!

We did our longest run to date this Saturday – 20 miles!! Two mid week runs of 5 miles (one a hill session) and then a massive 20 miles at the weekend. It was surprising manageable except for the last few miles – I don’t say that lightly – it wasn’t easy – but I had in my mind that we would be crawling the last couple of miles. The wind was unrelenting and in fact the last mile we could barely walk against the wind let alone run. We pretty much ran through every weather condition in the 3hrs 45 minutes – sun, rain, 2 hailstorms and the sea wind most of the way of course.

We changed our fuel stops making sure we took on a gel every 5 miles instead of every 6 or 7 which worked really well. We also broke the run up so that it wasn’t so boring running for miles and miles in one direction.

This is our longest run that we will do before the marathon which is now under 3 weeks away!! GULP. But, after the 20 miler (have I mentioned that we ran 20 miles on Saturday??) we now know that we can do it and we’re probably looking forward to it now for the first time.

Sunday was a different matter….Zoe was walking round like John Wayne and I was hopping along like Jake the Peg! Not a pretty sight. At least we know that we’re not going to be overly mobile after the marathon.

The next 3 weeks are ‘taper’ weeks which means we’ll slowly reduce the miles to give our bodies a rest (only 12 miles next weekend!). We’ve got to eat properly from now and work towards the 13th and resting wherever possible outside the training schedule.

Total miles this week: 30

Lessons learnt: We can do it!! Oh, and I must make sure the hotel we are staying in after the marathon has a lift.