I just finished a 23.666km running that lasted about 2hh:13mm:31ss !
Back in May I was supposed to be running a half marathon, but it was cancelled, along with most other events. So I decided I would run the distance anyway and try to do one each month. So far that has been:
- May was two laps of my usual Sunday loop.
- June was a clockwise loop of the Letchworth Greenway, pretty much as the race I missed.
- July was to Biggleswade and back on a fairly hot day.
For today's run I opted to do the Greenway in the opposite direction to last time. I got up at 7am to avoid the heat and had some breakfast (granola and fruit plus orange juice). It was fairly cool out and I headed off through Arlesey. It was fairly quiet out there as you might expect on a Sunday morning. After passing through Fairfield there is a long stretch by the road, but there was not too much traffic.
After that it is onto the Greenway proper where it is fairly quiet. I saw quite a few other runners who may have been doing full laps too. There were also some cyclists out. I deviated a little to take a track through some trees. That involves looking out for roots. I stopped at around the 7km mark to take a couple of photos.
The Greenway is quite familiar to me as I have cycled it a lot, but I still forget the exact sequence of sections. There are a few hills, but they may not be as steep in this direction. The downhill sections were quite welcome, but I seemed to be managing to maintain around 5:30/km. That kept me on track for a 2 hour half.
The second half was starting to be hard work, but the pace was still good. After one nice downhill I turned into a headwind. When I got to the road leading to the dump I turned left rather than following the Greenway as I was going to do the distance anyway and I thought it would be a little shorter. That took me to the Grange where we do parkrun and then down the hill back towards Fairfield. As I got close to 21km I could see it would be close to 2 hours and so I did speed up a bit. I completed the half down the steep hill.
After that I took it a bit easier and when I got back to Arlesey I decided that was enough running, so I stopped the watch and walked the last kilometre home. My legs had pretty much had it. A full marathon still seems a long way off, but I am happy with my progress.
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