Faster!

Four large beech trees, fallen like dominoes, uprooted from the shallow waterlogged soil.     

A good run this morning, and a half marathon PB.


What a difference a couple of days can make. After being battered by the worst week of storms in living memory this morning dawned clear, calm and cold.

For some reason my enthusiasm for going for a run had dipped a bit, but I knew I had to get out and do my Sunday run of at least 8 miles, just to keep things moving, especially as work and atrocious weather had meant that I hadn't run since Monday. But as I soon as I started running it felt better, and I quickly opted for a right turn at the end of the lane, rather than a left, to extend the distance and add a few more hills.  It was a beautiful morning, clear blue sky and sunlight glinting off frost and frozen puddles.

I've been saying that the mud has been slowing me down recently, although I haven't been sure by how much, but today I chose a route that was mainly on roads and hard tracks, and the difference in my speed was very noticeable. My first 5 miles were all under 8'30" despite being over some reasonable hills. I slowed a bit once I was on the tracks in the woods, but not by much, and by about 7 miles I realised that if I kept this speed up I should be able to slip easily under the 2 hour target I had for a half marathon. A quick bit of mental rerouting, and I extended the run from 9 to 13 miles, still mainly on roads and paths to allow me to keep the speed up. As I passed 10 and then 11 miles I knew that I only had to keep up 10 minute miles to get home in under 2 hours (at least according to my phone app).

The last mile or so came into the village along our flooded main road, and I was splashing through ankle/shin deep water, which did a good job of cleaning weeks of mud of my shoes! As I got to 13 miles, the phone announced that I had done the last mile in 7'45", which was suspicious and suggested that it had lost GPS lock, so I ran a further quarter of a mile, getting home in 1h58m. Checking the log afterwards, I could see that the GPS had overestimated the distance, but Google Maps confirmed that I had dome 13.1 miles, so had managed my first sub 2 hour half marathon.

Happy with that!