Return of the medium sized run

Oy vey, what a rough morning.

I felt ok when I got up and went out on a planned 18km run - the newly instituted "midweek medium long run". It's something I did all through my training for the last marathon, but this time have done a grand total of once in a row...

So I thought I'd do my second one today, but boy oh boy it wasn't easy.

I was fine waking up, felt keen to run as I got my gear together and was ok starting off - all of which is a big plus! My legs were fairly sore, but only to be expected after the 30km on Sunday and the hard 45min fartlek yesterday, and I thought once I warmed up I'd be fine. My plan was to try to keep around 5:00 pace - I would have loved to do 4:30s but didn't think my legs would be up for it.

Well the old dogs weren't even up for 5s and I plodded along feeling a bit shitty that I couldn't go faster. I picked things up around the middle of the run for a stretch and had a couple of sections where I had the pace down to about 4:30s for brief periods, but it was always a struggle and I hobbled home completely done for.

I managed to do the last 3kms commute to work at a better pace but felt completely empty by the time I arrived. Breakfast certainly helped my feel better both physically and mentally, maybe I was just really low on fuel?

Anyway it's done now, phew. 18km in 1hour 40mins, average HR 135, average pace 5:30.