Last of the long runs...

Today is 20 days until race day. I set out to do 15 or 17 miles, depending on how I felt... in the event I split the difference and did 16.

Every mile was at about the same pace - 8 minutes/mile. I found it quite tough though in the last few miles especially. I don't know to what extent last week's diarrhoea and vomiting bug will still be affecting me - I'm sure it'll be a couple of days yet before its effects are fully gone.

All in all, 2:07:50. Looking at my records, I can see that I've run a 16 mile run once before, about 11 weeks ago, and improved by just under 13 minutes; at the time that was the longest run I'd ever done. The pace I did today is the pace I need to average over the whole marathon to get under 3:30 - that seems a really tough proposition at the moment. I suppose that three weeks' tapering and hopefully fresh legs in the morning (I did this one late afternoon) ought to help. If I can do it, I think it's going to be very close.

David
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