Off road run on the Braes

Time: 10.30am
Route: Gleniffer Braes
Distance: 15miles
Time Run: 2hr 28mins 00secs (av 9.50mins per mile)

Today was my longer run of the week and I was back up on the Braes. I was planning to run an easy 15miles without pushing it too hard as I am running in the Renfrewshire Cross Country on Saturday at Reuken Glen Park. It's 6miles so sounds as though it's going to be tough! I'm teaching swimming for 3 hours from 9 till 12noon so it's going to be a bit tight getting there and warmed up for the 1.40pm start but I'm sure I'll be fine. There will be a good turn out from Kilbarchan including a first cross country race from Mrs Pacepusher - go Caroline go! Thomas is also running for his new club Grennock Glenpark Harriers so it will be good to catch up with him. I don't expect to see him during the race as he is obviously running really well at the moment!

Anyway back to the run - a good steady effort round my favourite loops on the Braes. I have been running on the Braes for over 2 years and hardly ever see another runner. Today I saw not 1 not 2 but 3 runners!! Maybe they read my blog and want to see for themselves ... or maybe not. My foot was starting to hurt a bit over the last 20mins but doesn't seem too bad now. It's not quite right though so I'm hoping the rescan will sort it out. I find on these training runs the mental training is as important as much as physical. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself with 3 miles to go, the wind in my face, my foot a bit sore, all my jelly babies eaten - you get the picture. But it's times like this in an ultra race that you have to dig deep and find something to get you through it. One of my favourites is a simple trick of counting 50 breaths. I try and think of nothing else but getting to the 50 and often by the time I get there I'm feeling better and running better. It helped today!

There is a really interesting post on the whw race forum at the moment about 'When do you start training?'

Davie Hall posed the question and there have been some really interesting replies. I've added my penny worth so I'll not repeat it here. One of my favourites is from Jon Steele who talked about for him the journey is more important than the race. He loves to run big distances and push himself to the limit in training. So much so that given the choice of running less miles in training and knocking a few hours off his time or running big mileage and do worse in the race he would go for the later! It just goes to show that there is no one way to train for ultra races as we all have different goals and aims.

We have almost 30 signed in for our first training run on the whw route on Sunday 30 November 2008. If you want to join us leave a post on the forum.