Longest week so far

Great weather this week. For the first time this year, I ran home on Wednesday down the canal. You can get on the canal at the end of deansgate, follow it all the way out past old trafford and stretford, get on the waterpark, and pop out at the back of chorlton. Running home after work is significant, because the route isn't lit, so you can only do it in daylight. It'll be even easier in a few weeks, when the clocks change :) Garmin details here.

After a quiet saturday, I got up this morning for an uber-run. Check out this map. My original plans was to head down a cycle lane along an old railway track, heading anti-clockwise across south Manchester, out to gorton reservoir, around the reservoir and then back. However, the railway line turned out to be not particularly inspiring (it's essentially a big ditch).

So instead, having got to the reservoir, i turned left, and headed off looking for the ashton canal. Turned out there was an easy route there, and so I could follow it into town, back out again, and back on the usual route home through stretford.

18 miles felt like a bloomin' long way - I'm trying not to think about the 8 miles more I'll have to do in a few months time :-/

I've been pretty wiped out this afternoon, but many meals later I'm not feeling too bad. 33 miles in total this week, which is a new record.

Garmin data for the 18-mile loop this morning is here.

Will.

p.s. Who knew that the mighty Alan Turing could run a marathon in 2:46?! Very interesting opinion piece in The Guardian, here.

Back on the horse

Quick post this morning - I've actually done a run!

The week after the food poisoning was pretty much written off, and then I've been away skiing last week (pictures here).

Skiing was awesome fun, of course, but did get in the way of doing any real training, so I was itching to get out by the time I got back. As it happens, Tom & Alex were off on a long run last night of about 9 miles, so I joined them for that.

I could tell I was out of practice slightly, and was a bit more out of breath than I should have been early on. If I get another run like that done during the week, I should be ok for the humongous run at the weekend - I suspect the London marathoners in the Sunday group might be up to doing 20-odd miles by now :-/

Data from last night's run, here. Nice steady run. Interesting that those guys are now running faster than the medium group on the club social runs though...