Heat Hotting Up In UK 28.5 Degrees – Ran 8 Miles Hilly Very Tough

In the UK we are supposed to be having a heat wave and today were 28.5. I was due to run 5 ½ miles according to myasics but I missed yesterdays run as I was out all day so never had time to run it, it was only 3 ½ miles so today I decided to run 8 miles.

I got dropped off at Tesco and started to run for bestwood, I had no breakfast which was probably a big mistake as it was getting hot outside, I did however take a bottle of water and took sips every half a mile to a mile or once I had ran up a hill.

The course was a mixture of flat, uphill and downhill’s and the highest I got to was 700ft which was a tough hill and I had to stop and rest for about 10-30 seconds.

I’m used to running on flat surfaces and also tarmac but the run today had mixture of terrains from; road, grass, stones, and a horse trail with lots of horse poo which I had to keep dodging and it was quite smelly.

Below is a chart of the elevation!

I wasn’t looking to run at a certain pace today I was going by feel and the flats I ran around 7:30 and the downhill I made some time back which I lost on the uphills.

Overall I averaged around 7:57 with a time of 1:03:42 which I was very happy with due to 2 reasons;

1. I haven’t run long distances for a few weeks and…
2. It was a hilly course

Below are my mile splits which show that I was hitting nearly 8 min miles. The first being my warm-up, the second 2 miles were a long uphill as show on the elevation chart above.

The next mile was downhill and made some good ground with the fastest mile of 7:22. I then added 2 more miles going uphill but the last of the mile was a killer although not as high as the other hill, but it was much steeper and this really hurt.

I then add 2 more miles to go which was back the way I started the hills so it was downhill hence 7:32 and the last 2 miles were pretty much level.

So I’m definitely happy with the run today.

The Robin Hood marathon 2011 has finally released its marathon course so I will be practicing the course over the next few weeks.

The 2nd part of the course is very flat but the 1st half has some big hills so as long as I keep running hills, I should really be in good form with the Robin Hood hills as I don’t think they are as big as the ones today but I may be wrong, but will test them very soon.

I’m also now starting to look forward to running it as it’s getting closer and closer.

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