Another Long Run

Haven't posted for more than a week, but thought I should maybe post when I do a long run!  As always, with my odd focus on safety post-tbi, this run was on a gym treadmill.  Dunno if a treadmill makes it harder or easier, but at least it's flat with lots of water and history podcasts to listen to 😁. The last long run was two weeks ago.  Typically the plan has one long run every Saturday, but last week was an easy week.  Don't know why but I wasn't complaining, so last week was 'only' a 90m run on the Saturday 😁.  Today it was back to 170m, so exactly the same plan as two weeks ago.  I found that last long run very hard!!  I was nowhere near the power targets and struggled loads near the end.  Today was much better, but by no means perfect!  I was still below the power targets, but nowhere near as far below.  And I still struggled to have a shower in the gym and walk home after the run, so lots of similarities.  But, apart from the better power/pace, the main thing for me today was that the last 45m was very hard, but definitely easier than two weeks ago!  For example, the end of this run is 5m easy running which I usually do at 11.3kmh on the treadmill.  Two weeks ago, even though only 5m left, I had to go a lot slower.  But today, I felt completely knackered, but I managed to do 11.3kmh for the last 5m!  Very happy!  And this is after a week of quite heavy training on Mon/Tue/Wed & Thu!  As to pace/power, as mentioned I was below the planned power, but the bulk of the run is supposed to be two hours at a minimum of 236w.  Two weeks ago I was at 221w which is well below the planned minimum, but today it was 233w.  So, under what was planned but not by much!   Very happy!  After the two hours there is a planned 35m at a minimum of 262w!  I knew that would be too hard!  I was nowhere near that, as I managed 243w, but that is still a lot better than two weeks ago which was 226w.  I may be slow, but I am happy that I appear to be improving!!  Yay!!  In total this run was 30.95km (inaccurately measured as 32.4km by the treadmill) at a pace of 5:30m/km which is decent for me!  If I could do that for the marathon I would be delighted, but I would struggle to do the extra 10km for sure!!  But the marathon is four weeks away, so time for more improvement!  I may be being overly optimistic, but this run has made me think about next week's long run, which is an extra 5m, so 175m.  If I can do that at a tiny bit more pace/power I could maybe hit 32.2km which is 20 miles!!  Gotta be something to aim at!!  A sub three-hour 20 miler on a treadmill would be fabulous for me and absolutely make me think that the marathon may be possible...  We'll see 😁.  But the other side of that coin is that I am still very much struggling to run much beyond two hours.  It is painful!  I actually thought after today's run that perhaps my idea of concentrating on endurance running is daft!  Maybe, after retiring, I should be focussing on getting my guitar playing better or something instead.  I feel that a focus on practically anything other than endurance running would be easier and less intimidating!  Unless someone mentions Ironman or ultra marathons, neither of which I am going to aim at!!!

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