I've had this weekend earmarked for doing 10 miles for a while, my life is so busy that all my weekend runs up until the Half are already planned, I know what distances I'll be doing and what day I'll be doing them each weekend so that there's no opportunity to think "I'll do it tomorrow" "I'll get that distance in next weekend" etc. And to be honest, after the disappointment of my run last weekend I was quite looking forward to getting back in the saddle so to speak and tackling a distance rather than pace run.
Something I've learned since I've been upping the distance is how important route planning is. It's alright going for an out and back or a few familiar laps when it's a couple of miles, but I've found this is tedious and repetitive on my longer runs. Plus, I like to be able to sort of visualise where I've got left to go as I'm on my way around.
Over the past few years, I've lived in eight different places in Nottingham, which has been extremely beneficial to my route planning. I know several different pockets of the city, what roads link them together and where any nasty hills are. With all this in mind, I set about planning my route for this weekend and spent the rest of the week really looking forward to getting out and running it.
Saturday morning came around and while I was quite looking forward to it, it did seem slightly daunting too. I'm part of a running club and while it is nice to run with others, I just felt like going on my own this weekend, and I'm really glad I did. As I made my way around the perimeter of the city I started thinking about all the memories I've got at the various places I passed. The beer gardens I've spent hours laughing and drinking in, the houses I've been to mad parties at, where I crashed my car, the site where the tower block I once abseiled down used to stand, a couple of places I've lived and all the memories they held, another place I crashed my car (whoops). The list is huge and I could be typing all night!
Importantly though, running round the city with a smile on my face thinking about all these things really made the 10 miles fly by! I'm not saying it was easy, but I really really enjoyed it! I'm also especially proud of myself for actually remembering my whole route, I think it's the first time I've not ended up making a bit of it up because I've forgot my plan.
So any of my lacking confidence feelings following last week are at the back of my mind for now. I managed to run ten whole actual miles and I've lived to tell the tale. It's now ten weeks until the race and I've only got another 3.1 miles to pull out of the bag which doesn't seem like a huge amount.
I've got three busy/boozy/birthday weekends coming up now so fitting in my runs is going to be a bit tricky. I'm planned and ready though and I know I can fit in at least 10k at some point each week with the next long run (eleven miles) planned in for Saturday 13th August. I'll be 25 then, flipping heck!
In case you're interested, here's the route...
As always, thanks for reading!
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