Wednesday Evening Blues*

Day:         94
Distance: 11.30km/7.02miles

Time:       55:06 secs

Calories:  962

I set out for Wednesday night's run with two objectives in mind:

          1) To make sure my left knee was feeling ok

          2) To average a pace of 8mins/mile

If you read my last post you'll know that in the last couple of runs I had some discomfort and I was concerned about picking up an injury so close to the marathon. If you read the post before that you'll know that averaging 8 mins per mile would mean that I complete the marathon in less than my target time of 3:40.

So, both objectives were pretty important and I'm pleased to report that both were achieved. In fact, it's doubtful whether the second could have been achieved without the first.

Across the entire run I averaged 7:51mins/mile, with five of the seven miles completed in under 8 minutes and two of them - both of which contained a hill climb - taking slightly longer (mile 4 took 8:03 and mile 6 took 8:06). While this run was 19 miles shorter than a marathon I think it's positive to find that I can comfortably run at a pace quicker than that which I need in order to achieve my target. I don't know whether I can maintain that kind of pace for the full 26.2 miles but I'll give it my best shot.

I plan to be up at 4:30am tomorrow to run my final long run, so I better sign off now.

* You may or may not have noticed that a lot of the titles for my blog posts are inspired by songs or musicians that I particularly like. I was struggling with a title for tonight's post, if the run had been done the day before I'd have grabbed for "Ruby Tuesday" by the Stones but as it was a Wednesday I had a tougher time finding something suitable. "Wednesday Evening Blues" is a song by the legendary Blues-man John Lee Hooker, other than the day of the week it references it isn't particularly appropriate - after this run I certainly didn't feel blue - but it was the best I could do, I'm afraid. Actually, I don't know why I'm apologising - it's an absolute tune.