Juneathon: Day 6

Didn't really feel like going out for today's planned 10 mile run, partly because the weather looked unpromising, but mainly because I felt stupidly nervous about it, given that on the only previous occasion I attempted to run 10 miles I felt awful the whole way and only managed 9 and a bit. So was hoping, indeed needing, to remedy that today, as half-marathon is now a mere 4 weeks away, but I can't say I felt confident. Spent morning buying daughter a new car seat and "helping" husband buy new football boots in JJB Sports, where I discovered an entire, pink section of the shop devoted to women's exercise equipment, which was a bit perturbing. Why would you want pink weights?

Anyway, finally set off for run about 3.30pm with freshly loaded MP3 player (didn't feel in the mood for music so had downloaded comedy podcasts - Alan Davies' World Cup programme from Radio 5, and Radio 4's Friday Night Comedy, guess middle age really is setting in) and stupid bum bag type thing which won't stay put and bobs around my waist annoyingly, containing phone, key and a handful of jelly beans. Never used to bother taking my phone but then thought "what if I fall down a hole and twist my ankle in the middle of nowhere" so now I do take it. Sometimes. Didn't bother with a drink, although I was going to take one and probably should have done, in the interests of Good Hydration as advised by all the books, but I don't like carrying stuff, so I didn't, even though I bought one of those oval shaped bottles specifically for this purpose. Maybe I will use it next week.

So anyway, I ran up the hill (slow first mile, as always) and along the main road towards Peterculter, and luckily the rain more or less held off for most of the way, and some of the time I felt quite good and some of the time I thought, there is NO WAY I am ever going to manage 10 miles, but I kept going, ran through Peterculter, turned round and ran back through it the other way, then back onto the old railway line (at about 5.5 miles) towards home. Confess I did have a couple of short walk breaks at this point, one at about 6 miles and one at about 7 miles, but in my defence they were very brief. Reached the path heading down towards my house and had only done 8.7 miles so pushed myself on a bit further and managed to complete the 10. Yay! And amazingly, even with the walk breaks, in an overall average pace of just under 10 minute miles, which as I am aiming for 10:15 minute miles in the half marathon, I was well pleased with. Though to be fair, the half marathon is hillier, at least in the first few miles. But still, yay.

Distance: 10.08 miles
Time: 1:40:17
Splits: 10:59, 9:51, 9:51, 9:41, 9:57, 9:52, 10:19, 9:46, 10:02, 9:17
Average pace: 9:57

Total Juneathon distance so far: 27.43 miles
Total Juneathon running time so far: 4:31:43

I'm going to try and upload the Garmin data here, but it won't work, because it never does, and I don't know why, because although it looks OK when I preview it it never seems to show up in the actual post.



See?

Don't know whether this works any better.