15 Apr - 12 Steady miles

I was feeling a bit of a fraud today, as whilst I had only a 12 mile run to do today, my friends were running the full 26.2 miles around Paris.  The Paris Marathon had a downloadable App that was supposed to track where they were in the race, but unfortunately after the first 5K it gave up, must have been overloaded by the number of runners.  Fortunately Craig had signed up for the Runkeeper Elite App and that seemed to do the job most of the race and gave us an idea of how it was going.  It was Jo and Craig's first marathon and they were storming! Far better than my 5hr 2 minute it took me to do my first one.  As the Endomondo App doesn't seem to be working for me so far I may very well give it a go next weekend.  Maria, Audrey, Ian and Martina also put in great times.  It's making me very apprehensive about next week though, I really have no idea how it's going to go, despite the fact that I put in quite a good run today.


I didn't take any codeine today, but used the equivalent of Diacalm (I know too much information, but I didn't want to experience a visit from the infamous gingerbread man (an in joke for the listeners of Marathon Talk).  I also used two running gels, one normal and one caffeine and one bottle of sports drink.  I wore my nice new purple running shorts and they did feel nice and loose and comfortable, no chaffing ! ;) .  It was not a bad day out there, it started off fairly bright and sunny and then clouded over towards the end.  The plan was for a steady 12 miles, which according to the 4 hr plan (even though I now think this is out of my league)  that I've been doing is @ a 8:50 to 9:10 pace, and blow me down if I didn't do it in 1hr 50 bang on which is a 9:10 pace.  I really don't think it's the kind of pace that I could keep up for the full marathon, and probably a better predictor of my Half Marathon Pace (which would be the best I've done for 18 months!!)  so I really surprised myself , but to be fair the course was much flatter than the one I've been using previously, so much easier to pace without the big hill.  Just the one episode of Marathon Talk today on the ipod and some of Sarah's running playlist -  some classics on there, such as Thin Lizzy's Whisky in the Jar and David Bowie's Golden Years ( she's old beyond her years ;)  ) but also the Foo fighters Best of You


Another highlight to the run was that I saw one of my work friend's husband out on his bike today and he waved at me.  It's great when you see someone you know, it's usually the other way around and people tell me they've seen me out on a run and I'm totally oblivious to it.


Well that's it for the long runs until the big one next Sunday!