Weather

Aside from the icy start to training, we've been very lucky with the weather so far this year.  Our luck changed this morning and we got up to a very windy morning. The forecast suggested winds of 20mph, with gusts of 30mph.  All good training for those miles round Canary Wharf on the actual day!
Our schedule had us dropping back down to a 12 miler on the long weekend run,  as consolidation and due to the increase in speedwork during the week.  So that it wasn't too easy for us, we decided to do a nice hilly route we'd first covered last year.  Some of the group are in their 9th year of marathon training so were getting a bit bored of the routes set out and measured by the club.  Last year we each took responsibility for finding a new route, measuring it and writing out directions.  We started from different villages in the area and covered new ground, making it much more interesting (and you didn't know where the tough bits were coming!). 

This route was prepared by Katie, one of our fastest marathon runners, who is currently training for the Paris Marathon on April 10th.  She puts her success down to hilly runs.
Why do we want to practise hills when the London Marathon is flat?  Because anything that will make London seem easier is welcomed!  It's also actually quite hard to find a flat route round here - as we found out when trying to plan our 8 mile speed session for Thursday!

By the time we'd got to the six mile point, the wind was slightly less brutal but the rain had started.  We do have to train in all weather, as we don't know what it will be like on the 17th April.
The final four miles were a gradual climb back to Katie's house.  I was imagining Tower Bridge (my favourite part of the marathon) to get me up the hills and managed the last 3 miles in sub-10min/miles.  

The water tower seemed to come into view a lot sooner than I expected and we were back to finish in just over 2hours.  Average pace 10:14min/miles which I'm pretty pleased with considering the inclines!  

We're trying to be much better this year at our post run cool down.  We walk a little bit after finishing the run, rather than stopping and jumping straight back into the car to go home.  We've also been much better at stretching too, which will hopefully help to ensure we stay injury free.
Tomorrow we're off road again for a leisurely 50 minutes and hopefully we'll be checking out a possible fundraising option.