This week I decided to take a slightly different approach to training. Work commitments took me to London for the week, away from my wife and son...a challenge I really don't like facing. To keep myself sane and make the week go quickly, I decided I'd run my 100 miles for the week in 5 days, leaving the weekend free to spend quality time with my family. As a side note, I also chose to eat a vegetarian diet for the week although this isn't much of a challenge with the options available in a major city these days. Therefore, I won't discuss this in this post. My accommodation was in Brick Lane near Whitechapel which gave me a central location to be able to reach all of the major London attractions on my runs. This kept things interesting. It also added another layer to the challenge as I had a 2.5 mile walk to and from work to fit in each day too - taking around 45 minutes on a busy morning London. I could have taken the tube, but I can't think of many things worse than being locked inside a metal tube 100 metres or so below the earth's surface! I kept my same daily routine of waking at 4:30 am, getting ready and heading out for a run. I started the week as I meant to go on, running 13.15 miles on Monday morning and 11.20 miles on Monday evening. I also recorded 51,894 steps for the day, a total distance of 36.3 miles, and 3,809 kcal burned. After a phone call with my wife on Monday evening, she suggested that I run every bridge in London. That was my run for the next day sorted. However, this didn't quite work out to plan. I ran from Brick Lane to Vauxhall Bridge and started to zig zag my way along the River Thames to Tower Bridge. I knew there were 11 bridges to cross and when I got to Tower Bridge something didn't quite add up! I'd missed Waterloo Bridge. There was still time to get it done so I headed back to finish my challenge. Or so I thought! I got back to my hotel room, and when I was having a shower it hit me - I'd missed London Bridge! How I could miss the most obvious bridge in London I have no idea. I actually ran past it twice! So that was Wednesday sorted as I set out to run across all the bridges in London again. This time was much more successful as I hit every bridge without running past any, for 13.2 miles at 7:41/mile pace. I went on to run 107.36 miles for the week, in 800 mins, for an average pace of 7:27/mile. I've run 100 miles in 5 days several times before but this time was a bit harder. Whether that due to was a change in my daily routine, or the extra miles I was covering walking to work and back I wasn't too sure. However, when I looked into it in more detail, with the walks to and from work, I'd actually covered 158.4 miles in 5 days - 235,655 steps! I wasn't too bothered about the slower pace as this week was about building some mental resilience and going into ultra mode to get the miles done. Pace wasn't important. On the whole, a successful week that set me up perfectly for a lovely family weekend! Weekly summaryMon - 24.35 miles, 7:01/mile, 2114 kcal
Tue - 25.32 miles, 7:22/mile, 1973 kcal Wed - 23.69 miles, 7:37/mile, 1862 kcal Thu - 22.68 miles, 7:48/mile, 1659 kcal Fri - 11.32 miles, 7:31/mile, 826 kcal TOTAL - 107.36 miles, 7:27/mile, 8434 kcal
2 Comments
Nice work Dan. I agree, nothing worse than huddling up with hundreds of people in those noisy metal sardine cans underground!
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Ultra Dan
16/12/2022 07:51:19 am
Thanks, Sean. You're definitely right about the tube - not my cup of tea at all! It definitely did make the time go fast - no time to think about being homesick!!
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