The road is long!

26.2

Week 5

This feels like the hardest week so far. We are really fatigued after coming back from London but still keen to get going and smash all the sessions on the plan .

The plan says 12 miles this weekend, our longest training run so far has been 10 miles! And I have to admit to finding that hard.

This run has been playing on our mind all week. We lay our clothes out ready and fill the camel back, we have jelly babies bought and ready and Saturday night is spent dreaming about it (can you imagine what we are going to be like the night before the marathon!)

We have spoken to Mel and she has suggested trying to start the run at 10am so that we can practice with what to have for breakfast and fuel for the run. So we organise child care for the kids, get up at 8 am for breakfast and a few of the usual household chores before we head out.

We set out from home which means a big hill before mile one but it feels ok as our legs are fresh and rested. We’ve arranged to meet our friend so that she can run some of the miles with us so we pick her up 2.5 miles in. Everything feels good, we are running a little faster than we thought but the miles feel easy and chatty. As our friend Ellen only wants to run 5-6 miles we decide to turn back and add some extra on to the end of our run. We soon realise that the last couple of miles are going to be mostly up hill.

We are tired, our legs are getting heavy and our brains are screaming at us to stop. We admit defeat and have to stop and walk. This feels like a massive failure after such a successful run but we get to the top of the hill and start running the down hill towards home. One more little loop of our village and we are done.

After we finish it’s hard to remember all the good points of the run and we dwell on the quarter of a mile walk! That afternoon we had a catch up with Mel and got some well needed reassurance and we have had so many lovely messages of support.

The thing about running is you always need to look where your going and not think about where you have been.

A 5 mile speed session on Tuesday is next up a we start week 6 of our journey to Manchester.