14.3 miles - 2 hours 22 mins

You know that you are making progress when you get back to the gym after a little run and everyone is rushing around trying to give you energy drinks, jelly beans and gels in case you suddenly drop dead.

I kind of felt sorry for Trevor this afternoon as he looked so worried that I was about to keel over and die whilst he had barely broken sweat (this guy is not human – or at least cut from a different cloth then myself). However, what Trevor has yet got a handle on is that by the time I got home, had a long bath and a gallon of fluids I was already working on the next run. What went well today? What went wrong today? What points can I learn from this and how can I improve next time. I had made of list of positives and learning points so that next time I head out it will be smarter. I am never going to be a great runner but I have to play to my strengths – that is my analytical skills, my ability to analyse things and most of all my sheer tenacity.

So, pragmatically…

It was the furthest I have ever run. It was 13 miles of relative pleasure and then a mile and a bit of exquisite pain. You play the odds and this is a result. It was a run where I learnt the importance of gels, the importance of digging deep and the sheer magnitude of the run. If I had not gone out today with a huge degree of respect for the distance I would have been even worse – so this is all something which goes into the planning and strategy for next week.

I leave the hard planning to Trevor but I still take a lot from my own notes – which now run to pages. If I can run close to 15 miles I can run 26 and a bit. I don’t think it will be easy but it will be the ultimate test of my mental tenacity which I think is worth the pain alone.