Sunday saw the first of the final year's preparation races ticked off - the Sheffield Half Marathon. 13.1miles through the scenic, and not so scenic streets of the Steel City. It wasn't the ideal preparation, going out until 2am on Saturday morning, followed by an alcohol induced chunder in the wee small hours, but by Sunday morning I was at the start line almost raring to go.
The race was quite warm and humid, but reasonably comfortable for most of it. I struggled a little from 11 miles and had to concede defeat to Rich (fellow MdS 2012 competitor and main training partner) in the last mile as my dehydrated state slowed my pace. Clocked a 1 hour 51 mins and 37 secs and was aiming at 1hour 50 so not too shabby all things considered.
Training since the last blog post has been steady - not all going to plan, but got some decent longish runs in - a brutal 66 minute return trip from Horton-in-Ribblesdale up to the top of Pen-y-Ghent and back in the Yorkshire Dales; a 2hours sweat-a-thon through the Peaks and a 10 miler round Fairholmes/Derwent Reservoir which I enjoyed a lot less than the night time run of the previous month.
Next step is to focus on the Lakeland Marathon round Coniston in July in 8 weeks' time. Only problem is I have to have an operation on my shoulder next week and I'm not sure how long it will prevent me from running. The bike is set up on the turbo trainer in the garage in case I can't run for a few weeks but it's not ideal. On the plus side, it should mean I can carry my pack in Morocco a little more comfortably than I can now. The downside to that is that distances don't really get any easier now until April 2012.
I've now booked in all the prep races I think I can handle between now and getting to the MdS so I have a good looking set of target training events to work towards.
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