The longest so far

It was the Harriers' awards do last night, and despite having my Antipodean Gentleman's Gentleman, Mr Verecondi, to drive me home, I was painfully aware of the large quantity of gunk sloshing round my nasal passages.  In addition to this, the close proximity of a water supping scouser with whom I had arranged to do a long run this morning made me take things pretty steady, and only a couple of beers and several pints of water were consumed.  Sadly due to insufficient quantities of buffet comestibles very little food was eaten either, so I was a tad concerned about the amount of fuel I'd have in the tank today.

I woke up this morning with Paul's farewell remark of "so we'll do it then, eh?" ringing in my ears, so once K had returned from her run (she's going really well - probably running twice every week now, so I expect great things at the Bratfud 10k in March - no pressure...) I was off.

Well in fact I was only "off" in as much as I had to go and rescue Maisie and Lily who's taken themselves off to the sweet shop, and with Lils' legendary decisiveness when it comes to confectionary, had been there about 20 minutes.  I arrived at Chez Paul a few minutes late to find him hopping up and down looking ready to burn up the road.

"7:45's?" I asked hopefully.

"Course, yeah, whatever" said Paul, setting off at about 7:25 pace.  No matter - the HR was behaving and I felt ok.

We actually settled into a really good pace - slow enough to chat but quick enough so the miles kept ticking over.  We hit the middle of Otley, about 7m in, at an average pace of 7:36 and my HR averaging 131bpm - comfy, and my cold seemed to be fine.  We carried on through Pool and out towards Arthington, a busy road but one that possesses that all important feature - flatness.  It just follows the Wharfe all the way, and is ideal for this type of mileage - there's lots of things to look at, and it breaks up naturally into 3 or 4 mile sections.

We touched the railway bridge in Arthington and turned for home, realising that we would be running into the wind, and the pace did drop slightly.  The 7m back from Arthington to Burley averaged 7:45, which had started to feel quite hard, and Paul was complaining his legs were feeling tired.  At this precise moment I thought it'd be a good idea to suggest a few miles of effort, so we agreed to run the 3m back to Ilkley at as close to MP as we could manage.  I'd forgotten that this section has a fairly long, although gentle, uphill section, which would explain my mile splits of 6:36, 6:44 and 6:49, but to be honest I was starting to feel it quite badly towards the end.  Still, I'm happy that I managed to run at that pace after 18m of reasonably steady running (averaged 7:46 for the first 18m).  Paul struggled a bit, which I think could be a combination of getting over a cold but also a bit of a lack of mileage midweek recently.  I doubled back after the effort, then we jogged back to his house to give me a total of 22.5m, averaging 7:42min mile pace.

I really enjoyed today, and going out with someone else not only makes it more fun, but it makes you get out and do it.  Both of us admitted that we'd probably have bailed had we not been meeting up, so we both now have a bonus LR in the bag!

My next LR will probably be on my own next Friday, but as you can see from my little table my next 20 miler will get my "5 longest runs" total over the target 100m.  Happy days...