Letchworth Greenway: Janathon day 11

My long run this week was a planned 14 mile run along the whole Letchworth Greenway. This route passes all around Letchworth Garden City, through beautiful countryside near Norton, Baldock, Willian, Hitchin, and Stotfold (and through the scenic Letchworth Industrial Estate, past the council tip, and alongside the railway line and the A1M...). It's a great trail for long runs and I feel very lucky that it is so close to where I live so I can use it for training runs (and cycling, when I can be bothered).

I have always thought of the Greenway as a 14 mile run; the Greenway trail is 13 miles but I have to run to it and back home again, and that works out as 14 miles. However, yet again, I failed to remember the run to the shops to meet my friends, which adds on 0.6 miles altogether. I am a noob.

I didn't need the hat either...

I was a touch more prepared for this run this week, unlike last week when I had to walk home because I'd run out of energy. I had my new running back pack with me, which has a 2 L water carrier inside, and I packed it with my homemade cookies, a gel, my phone, and my headtorch (although I didn't need it). I've also been careful to eat a bit more this week; last week I was focussing on trying to lose my Christmas podge, and I suspect 6lb in a week was rather an excessive amount of weight to lose. I've eaten plenty of biscuits this week to compensate.


I met everyone on Stotfold High St just before 7:30am: the usual group of runners (Ed, Tracey, and Paul) and some new faces too (Andy and John). We ran the towards Baldock and set off at a comfortable pace; there was some yo-yoing going on when Ed was trying to make me run at 9 minutes a mile, but I resisted and he eventually slowed down ;-) ("It's a marathon not a sprint" etc etc).

We were running really well and chatting too, which is a good sign the pace is comfortable for a long run. I love hitting that pace when you feel you can run forever (knees permitting), and I reckon I nailed that today. We had a bit of a walk up a long hill in Hitchin to get some energy back (around mile 9). By mile 10 I could tell John was struggling with the distance; Tracey and Paul had raced ahead, so Ed and Andy carried on the Greenway to try and catch them (taking a shortcut!), and John and I took the road back to Stotfold, which I knew would cut a mile off the total run. We ran-walked the last 2 miles, and I broke out my homemade choc chip cookies to see if they would help! We got back to Stotfold around the same time as Tracey and Paul, who had both run 15 miles! Whoops (sorry!).

The back pack was really good, it didn't get in my way while running and didn't rub anywhere. I even managed to work out how to drink from it (note to self: I don't need to fill it with 2 L water!) I'll be taking it on all my long runs in future.

This was my last long run before the Folksworth 15 next Sunday. I'm feeling a bit more confident about running that race now, after this run. It's going to be a training run, so I'll be carrying my back pack I think, but I'm aiming to run it at my target marathon pace, which is 9 min/mile (which is why I didn't want to run at that pace today!)