September started with a warm up race and the last race before my next marathon in October. A 6 hour timed challenge in York organised by See York Run York, Turpin challenge. I had wanted to break the 3 hour marker for 20 mile and knew I could do the pace needed to do this. The race however just didn’t go quite to plan in that sense.
The route went around the race course and then up into some woods before starting over for the next lap. I had had pancakes for breakfast, which my eldest daughter had made specially for me, the problem is my stomach does not get on well with pancakes and so I paid for it during this race. In fact I had problems early on but decided to keep going.
I might not have hit the sub 3 mark but I absolutely smashed my 20 mile PB and my 10 mile PB and had enough energy to walk a final lap to round it up to a full marathon. The race was well organised and there was a good supply of cakes at the end, but my stomach unfortunately wasn’t in the right mood for one.
There was no rest and training continued the next week. My watch started playing up and recording runs as running 1km in 25seconds, I can assure you this did not happen and so now all my strava records are completly wrong. I ran to feel and training was going well.
Towards the end of September I attempted a parkrun 5km with the aim of a PB. My PB at parkrun was 27.30 and I knew I had it in me to beat that time. I went to Goole, as the course is relatively flat and minimal turns which I thought would help. I literally ran with my heart and just focused on that finish line. I achieved a new PB of 25.03 and could not have been happier. Although those 3 seconds are now bothering me so I need to break the 25 minute barrier now
Taper then began and my weekly miles started coming down. This doesn’t make training any easier for me, although it is quite nice to be able to go out and get the run done with the majority of my day left. Not long to go now until Loch Ness marathon and I am really looking forward to it.
