Week 20 – nearly there

My final long training run is not so long as I am now officially ‘tapering’.  With 10 miles to do I thought I would go back to the Coventry Way and test how fast I could go.  With my Garmin foot pod double-wrapped in cling film I charged through the mud and water instead of my usual pussy-footing around it. This is how I propose to approach the Challenge next Sunday. 

I run the fourth quadrant of the Coventry Way, from Bed’th to Meriden in spring sunshine.  The first quadrant is all about railways, the second rivers and the third canals, but I do not know how to characterise this one, there is a bit of everything; lanes, fields, horse paddocks, woods, motorway crossings, suburban estates, and of course mud and water.  With the sun of the past week in some places the countryside has totally dried up and is even looking slightly parched, but in others the water still lies stubbornly on the ground, particularly at Corley Moor.

The speed is not bad. I manage to stay under six minutes per kilometre on the lanes and seven minutes per kilometre across the fields.  But next Sunday I will have four times as far to run.  So who knows what speed I will manage.

16.6k at 6:37mins/K