Another one bites the dust.

As Queen said, another one has, in fact, bitten the dust.  Sick of car insurance cock ups, I had cunningly arranged another Friday afternoon off work to run a long one, and I'm rather glad I did.

At Terry L's suggestion I drove to Silsden and parked near the end of Hainsworth Rd, which is the little lane that leads along to the canal and set off from there.  This avoids all the horrid single track slippy bit of canal and deposits you at the start of the tarmac surface near Riddlesden Golf Club.

The plan was to run 7:45 pace, and that is precisely what I did - past Crossflatts, past all our normal lunchtime landmarks like 5 Rise and the Fisherman's, then on through Saltaire (grand bit of industrial heritage, that) and Shipley.  I was expecting to go all the way to Esholt before turning, but not long after I left Shipley the 11 mile beep went.  Garmin must, of course, be obeyed, so I had a wee and set off back.

There wasn't much wind, but what breeze there was helped on the way back, so I did actually pop in  a couple of quicker miles down in the mid-7:30's, but generally the pace was comfortable and steady.  My HR was down below 130 most of the time, and apart from slightly achy legs I felt like I could go on for ever.  I had my new drinks bottle holder thing (which I still haven't paid for...sorry Paul!) and a couple of gels.  I had the first gel at an hour, then the second at 15m, which was 1.5m before I was going to start my MP effort.  I was quite surprised by how far Crossflatts was from my start point, so the Micklethwaite road was at 16.5m, so 4m from where I'd come onto the canal.

I started my effort from here, and whilst it was a lot harder work, it was nowhere near as draining as the effort last weekend, which I suspect shows that Iwas still suffering from my cold rather than a miraculous improvement in fitness.  The first mile beeped showing 6:41, a wee bit quicker than my intended 6:45, as did the second.  I decided to try and do 4m at MP and was surprised to do mile 3 in 6:32, so pushed on a bit for the last mile (which became quite tough towards the end) and banged out the last one in 6:28.

My planning worked well, as I hit the end of the effort just before I dropped off the canal, and held the pace a bit higher for the mile and a half back to the car at about 7:35.  The watch stopped on 22m exactly in 2:45:30.  I was (am) definitely tired (and very hungry!) afterwards, but not drained as I was last week.

As you'll see from my little table my 5 longest runs are now through the 100m barrier, and I've just done my 6th 40m+ week in a row and my 3rd of over 50 - and there's still tomorrow to come!

Steady recovery tomorrow, then a day or two off with a trip to Edinburgh to watch rugby and drink some beer.