500 miles !

Somewhere along Victoria Embankment today I passed the half way mark in the 1000 miles part of my Marathon Challenge.

To celebrate, time for a wee musical interlude, courtesy of Craig and Charlie:

Approaching half-way

This week's been a productive week running, with a total of 21.17 miles clocked up and the first time for a while when I've been able to run 5 times on a working week this year - which maybe explains why my times in races this year have been a little disappointing so far. Running three or four times a week is ok but not really enough to gain the fitness you need to improve your times, and it's only now that I can feel the sort of fitness I had last summer start to come back. Hopefully it will help me run a couple of good times in the upcoming half-marathons.

My total for the year now stands at 497.61 miles, so my next run should take me over the half-way mark of my 1000 mile challenge. While I've made good progress to reach this point early in June, I have a couple of weeks' holiday coming up when I don't plan to run much, if at all, so I need to keep up the same level of running in the second half of the year if I'm going to reach my goal.

However if I follow my training plan for the two half-marathons I have lined up for the autumn that will add nearly 300 miles to my total by the beginning of October, and hopefully I'll be able to knock off the remaining 200 miles in the last 14 weeks.

Almost immediately the BUPA London 10000 was over the weather turned cooler and wetter - almost cold enough to ditch the shorts and t-shirt for tracksters and long-sleeve tops. Still, I quite like running in the rain, and the colder temperatures make running long distances easier.

BUPA London 10000

I've had a few days now to reflect on Monday's BUPA London 10000.

How did I get on against my targets ? Well, I ran all the way, finished the race, and enjoyed myself. And my brother also finished, and I think he enjoyed the race too. The other targets: well my finish time was 57 minutes exactly, 2mins 40 slower than last year, and 3mins 30 slower than my best time for the distance. So not so good.

So in one way I'm disappointed. But, looking back at my running since the marathon, I haven't been close to running at that pace for 10k, in fact Monday's run was my fastest 10k this year by more than a minute. So maybe my targets were a little optimistic for this particular race. But I'm convinced I can run faster than 53:30 some time and will be training hard for next time.

So, the race itself. We showed up a little later in Green Park than we should have, and by the time my brother had dropped his baggage and we'd both been to the toilet, it was 10:50 and we had to scuttle along to the start. Unfortunately as we were late arriving we only managed to fit in at the back of the 6th band of runners when we should have been in the 4th band.

It took 20 minutes for the elites and the rest of the people in front of us to start before finally we were off. Almost immediately we were getting blocked by slower runners and having to dodge and weave around people, going up on to the pavement to get past, at the risk of a twisted ankle. The first kilometre passed in 6m:18s, painfully slow. Coming down Embankment the route widened and the field started to thin out a little allowing more scope to overtake, and kilometres 2 and 3 were more respectable in 5:26 and 5:27 respectively. Not the nice steady start to a 10K you ideally want though.

The pace was getting a little too fast for my brother as we passed Sophie taking photographs near Waterloo Bridge, and just after the 3km water station we said our goodbyes. I more or less kept my pace during kilometre 4, 5:29 and headed up the hill into the City, reaching the halfway mark in 28:16, a reasonable time given our slow start.

I had convinced myself that from the halfway mark the route was entirely level or downhill and that I could gain some time in the second half of the race but it didn't feel particularly downhill and perhaps due to the heat or just my lack of fitness I was struggling to keep up the pace of the earlier kilometres. 5:47 for the sixth km and 5:41 for the seventh.

As I came back down onto the Embankment again and passed the 7km water station I was feeling pretty down but seeing Sophie at Waterloo bridge again cheered me up, and then a spectator at around the 8km mark caught my eye and said firmly, and quite correctly, "come on, not far now" which spurred me on even more. Kilometre 8 took me 5:43 and kilometre 9, 5:49. Turning off Embankment into Horseguards

Parade confirmed I really wasn't far from the finish now and, while I didn't manage the sprint finish I'd hoped for, I ran the last kilometre up Whitehall and into the Mall solidly enough in 5:49 to finish in 57:01, later corrected to 57:00 when the official times were published.

An average pace of 9minutes 10seconds per mile. My brother finished in just under 1 hour 3 minutes - he was disappointed too but like me any many others I think he struggled with the heat on the day.

So, disappointed at the time, and I know I can and will do better in future, but an enjoyable run overall. Again the temperature was a little high for comfort, and being blocked at the start probably cost me up to a minute and prevented me running a more even pace. Without wanting to make too many excuses, I've not been training as hard or as often this year so far as I did this time last year. Perhaps on the day I could have run 56 minutes or a little less.

But I think a PB was always going to be a stretch.

Since Monday I've had a couple of midweek lunchtime runs along the river, and today went to Richmond for a change to run a lap in even higher temperatures than last week, bringing my total miles to 472.41 for the year.