Going Slow

After the excitement of the weekend it's back to normal this week. I think this is the shortest period I've ever had between a (competitive) half marathon and the next run. I guess it goes to show how much of a difference regular training makes, in the past I'd still have been hobbling around with DOMS and sore joints, but at the moment it seems I can cope with 21km without too many adverse effects. 

Tonight I tried to run at a slow pace, which is actually a lot harder than it sounds. My limited experience of long distance running to this point has taught me that the worst thing you can do is start out too quick. For the 50km Roseland August Trail last summer I set a 'maximum pace' of 6 minutes per kilometre, any faster than that and we needed to slow down. That seemed to work pretty well, so I think I'm going to work with that again for the 100km. I don't think I'll know the optimal race pace until I've got some 50km+ long runs under my belt, but initially I'm going to with the 6 minute km and see how I go.

With that in mind I had a nice easy 10km jog tonight just slightly faster than that. Needless to say it was pretty comfortable (I'd be concerned if it wasn't, as it's only 10% of my target distance!) and there was a lovely sunset to admire as I loosened up some tight muscles after Sunday's epic hill climb.

I'm off to Devon for the Easter weekend and hopefully will manage my first long run. I have a new running pack to try out, so I'm planning a jaunt up the Tarka Trail to Barnstaple parkrun on Saturday morning. An update will follow!