Long Run - 30km (enjoying the sunshine)

5 months ago

dannewton just finished a 30.1km run, that lasted for 196 minutes.
This run helped dannewton burn 2289.0 calories.

Description from Strava:

What a beautiful day out there! It is rapidly approaching winter here in the UK, and that generally means cold and damp, gloomy and grey. But we still get odd bursts of sunshine, and usually its linked to a lack of cloud cover. Those clear skies also means the temperatures plummet overnight, and as it was we had the first proper frost of the year this morning.

Or rather, I was told we had frost, I didn't actually see it as I was still snuggled up in bed.

With the sunshine forecast I had hoped to get out nice and early, but with one thing and another (and mostly tiredness I guess) I didn't surface until 10am. Not ideal really, as these long runs last between 3-4 hours, and if I'm not careful I end up losing most of the day.

I'm actually writting this up after arriving home, I've had lunch and a shower, and it is already 3pm and the sun is already starting to set

Anyway, after a later than planned start, I finally headed out into the sunshine. At just 3C it was properly chilly and probably the start of the first proper cold snap of the Winter. As such I had a thin jacket on and gloves but to be honest the gloves didn't stay on too long after I had warmed up a little.

I wasn't entirely sure where to go, and at the last minute (literally while lacing up shoes) I decided to do an out and back route down to Navenby etc. As an out and back route I have full control of the distance I'm covering and decided to aim for 3 hours of running today. That means running in one direction for 90 minutes, and then turning and running back

It does also give me options to increase or decrease the distance as required. If I felt rubbish then I can just turn round earlier for example

it was flippin' gorgeous out there today!

The route follows a path that runs alongside the A607, which is a road tha t connects various villages together. One by one I ticked them off, Harmston, Coleby, Navenby...

After Navenby is Wellingore, and then there is a short, sharp hill which takes me down to very long straight road to Welbourne:

Welbourne is right at the end of this road, in the far distance

Arriving at the start of the village I was at 13.3km covered, in 85 minutes. I mentioned the option to be flexible earlier, and in this case I chose to extend the run a little and run through Welbourne until I hit 15km in total

At the halfway point I chose to pause for snacks (in this this it was 2 slightly squashed Cadbury Mini Rolls, and a packet of Mini Cheddars) I then I started heading back.

And the run back was nice and easy, for a total of 30kms - Perfect!

After arriving it was time for the aforementioned lunch and shower, and now its time to tackle some of the required weekend chores (washing and ironing for starters...)

A quick note about weekly mileage.

The last couple of weeks have seen a significant increase in the distance run, but if I'm honest those runs have been very uneven. You ca see this illustrated in the training log from my Strava account:

Week Nov 13-19, had one massive run of 45km, and then the rest of the 45km in that week comprised of 4 much smaller runs. That's not very even in my opinion, and I wanted to spread out the distance a little more evenly.

In this week (Nov 20-26) you can see I've increased Mondays run by 6km, and Thursdays run by 5km, and with a scheduled run of 12-15km tomorrow, I'll manage to keep a similar mileage, with out such a big long run. While its nice to be able to run 45km without feeling overly tired, I don't want to be doing that every week!

For the rest of the year I want to limit the 'long' run to no more than 30km, but we'll see how well I stick to that, as running goes (as life goes actually) I'm pretty impulsive at times!

If you would like to check out this activity on strava you can see it here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/10279099940

About the Athlete: Living in the UK, I am an intermittent Runner, but always striving for more consistency. When I'm not training I can be found photographing insects or listening to really loud angry music (which is the best type of music obviously!)