Loch Ness Marathon Training week 10

Interesting week last week to say the least!

Tuesday was a fartlek session with 1 mile warm up, then 6 miles fartlek where i went for it up the hills, easy pace down the hills and steady pace on the flats followed by a 1 mile warm down. On Wednesday it was bucketing it down and did an easy 9 miler. Thurdsday night was a 4 mile tempo run with 1 mile warm up/1 mile warm down.

Then Saturday. The plan for the weekend was to do my long run on Saturday morning then drive up to Fort William Saturday afternoon then climb Ben Nevis on the Sunday.
Due to having to sort stuff out in Glasgow on Saturday too meant I had to get up early to squeeze in my long run. I had wanted to get another 20 miler in but I would have had to got up at 5.15am! I did try but slept in till 6.15 (I never thought I'd say that!). So I did have a back up plan of doing a 12.5 mile loop followed by the park run in Pollock park which started at 9.30am. So I drove up to Pollock Park and started the run at 7.10am. I got the 12.5 miles done and got back to PP at 9.10, so with 20 minutes to spare I did an out an back run for 15 minutes meaning I was back at the start with 5 minutes to spare before the Park run started. So before the Park run started I rattled up 14 miles. I was feeling good so I decided I would start off at the pace I hope to go at in the marathon which is 8.30 min/per mile. It felt really good after the first mile I upped the pace and maintained it for the rest of the run ending up doing a personal best of 24.24 and 17 miles total. I have run faster 5Ks in training but I only count offical ones for personal best purposes. So although it wasn't a 20 miler, still a good session.

On the Sunday, myself Steven, Alan and Dan were going to attempt Ben Nevis but decided to abort it as the weather forecast was shocking consisting of gales and rain. So for our own safety and being in the most exposed place in Britain it was a good decision at the time not to go up. So instead we took 2 cars to Glen nevis visitor centre. Dropped one of the cars off and headed for Kinlochlevin. Alan and Dan decided they were going to take it easy and do an out and back walk. So myself and Steven pressed on and did the West Highland way from Kinlochlevin to Glen Nevis visitor centre. It was awesome with great views and the weather had not hit till the drive home so it was a pleasent walk which was about 12.5 miles which we managed in just under 4 hours.