Well I got up early and headed out on my long run without issue, leaving the house at 7.05. Not bad for a Saturday morning. I’d run a semi-hilly 14.6km last week, so the plan for this week was to avoid all hills and see if I could get up around 18km. My legs are starting to feel the cumulative effects of lots of mileage (for me anyway) so I was a bit unsure of how they’d cope with yet another “longest run I’ve ever done”.

I opted to run laps of the golf course as it’s a known distance (4.25km) and fairly flat, and after the usual 15-20 minutes of grumbling, the legs settled down and it was plain sailing. I stopped down at the Rose Bay ferry for a quick slurp of water every lap to keep myself hydrated, and I’d brought along an energy gel left over from my last triathlon which I took on the third lap to give me a bit of a boost.

I was feeling good, so the idea of keeping going and aiming for a half marathon (21.1km) cropped up and I decided to go for it. I had to think a bit and try and figure out how to add on enough to make up the distance without leaving me further from home, so I elected to run down, then back up, Newcastle Street, finishing with a time of 1:57:10 which I was happy enough with, especially as I’d been restricting my HR to a max. of 150, and had averaged 146.

My legs were bloody exhausted, so I did my usual post-long run thing of stopping off at the garage for some coke & Gatorade to get some sugar in to me then began the walk home. Once back at the ranch, I fired up Google Earth to measure how far I’d really run (isn’t technology great!), to discover it was only 20.75km! Damn!

Oh well, even if I didn’t knock off the 21.1km it’s still 6km further than I’ve run before, and at least I now know that I’ll have no problem finishing the race in a couple of weeks.

Thankfully I’ve booked a massage for Monday. I reckon my legs will need it!

B: 33.7km – R: 48.8km