The Road to Chester: Week 8

It's getting closer: my first marathon at Chester in October. Blogging my way through training.

Week 8 highlights:

• 37.6 miles ran this week.
• Great Warford 10 mile race. 
• Delamere parkrun.

Just the 37 and a bit miles this week mainly due to having Monday off after last weeks extended long run (it was in the training plan!) and no long run Sunday. This Sunday it was all about the racing: the Great Warford 10 mile race. 

I'd originally booked this race as it is a Royton Road Runners club championship race. While I've joined too late in the season to mount any serious challenge I want to do as many championship races as I can. Booking this worked out well as the training plan I'm following has this weekend down as a race, ideally a half marathon, but a ten miler should be fine.

I've only ever ran one ten mile race before, the Stockport Ten way back in December last year:

I've never been especially pleased with the STK 10 result: I'd hardly ran for nearly two weeks before the race and only decided to compete after parkrun the day before. Either way I think I'm a different runner 9 months later so I was expecting good things.

The race today was one of my key indicators of how I'm doing with my marathon training, the other being the Fleetwood half in two weeks time. My target time today was to finish in under 68 mins.



Target smashed!

The race consisted of a 2 mile loop followed by two loops of 4 miles. There is a hill that has to be tackled three times. I didn't think it was the worst hill I'd ever done, but climbing up it with 400 meters to go was a challenge! The course is round country lanes so there isn't much in the way of support for the runners (apart from the marshals who were excellent, and  Emma and Mark who were there to support. Thanks guys, it was really appreciated! There were however some nice views. If only I'd had an opportunity to see them!

I'm really pleased with the result it shows I'm well on track and entering today's time into the Runners World Race Time Predictor gives me a predicted time of 3:04:46 for the big 26.2. I'd be happy with sub 3:10 for my first so I'm looking good. Fleetwood in two weeks will be a real indicator.

I'm on three weeks of parkrun tourism at the moment. The first being Delamere parkrun. Set in Delamere forest this parkrun is all on trail round the lake/moss thingy. As I was racing the following day I wasn't going flat out, the target pace for parkrun ended up being Sunday's race pace.



It was the perfect  parkrun to do as "easy" plenty to see round the course including the "Go Ape" tree walking/climbing stuff. Things like this would be missed on a "fast" parkrun when all I'm looking for is a time. The course does have potential to be quick and I'd like to go back again and try for a time. The volunteers and runners were all very friendly and welcoming, I'd expect nothing less from parkrun!

So that's eight weeks of the sixteen towards Chester done. Half way there: am I on track for what I want to do? I think so, after the Great Warford 10 I'm feeling confident about distance running at pace. Now I really want a sub 90 half PB at Fleetwood in two weeks time.

Watch this space.