I completed my last long run yesterday so I am starting to ease back on my training.  Its 4 weeks until London, some sensible advice on this subject can be found here.

Yesterday I did my last long run, I have done 6 long runs of around 20 miles, I will only occasionally do a long run at around my target marathon pace, I will save that for the big day:

To get a gauge of my fitness going in to this block of training I ran 17.25 miles on 21 January and it felt easy running 6:52 pace with Chris Ward.  Another useful fitness test was the Brass Monkey Half Marathon on 14 January where I averaged 5:55 pace.

Grim up North Canal Canter 20 mile race

I would have done East Hull 20 but its original date clashed with Grindleford, so I entered Its Grim up North Canal Canter 20 mile race.  Having run 22 miles on Thursday, a rest day on Friday, I was on tired legs for the race on Saturday.  Four Doncaster AC runners took part, Janet Hampson, Luke Osbon, Mark Webster and myself.  Its a low key event with 6 races going off at the same time (all with different colour numbers), I had no idea who I would be running against.  I also had no idea of the course.

Team #DAC love these people

The race started late and I started on the front of the runners, I was in second place from the start, but the chap who was in front of me was doing the marathon (and he would go on to finish in around 2:37:00), after about 3 miles I was passed by another marathon runner who went on to finish in about 2:41:00.  So I was leading the 20 mile race.

The race was out and back and never left the canal paths.  The paths were good but around 4 miles were quite muddy.  The route was fairly flat but a few short sharp hills existed at lock gates.  The canal path is very well used by walkers, runners, cyclists and god walkers so it was a bit busy at times.  Drinks stations around every 3 miles and I stopped at about 5 of them to have a quick drink.  At the turn around point I stopped for a minute and had 3 drinks.

The finish

On the return part of the race I looked for 2nd place in the 20 mile race, I probably had about 1 mile lead.  It was great to run past all the runners doing the 20 mile, marathon, ultra.  I used 4 SIS gels (free from SIS) and used the race to test my kit for London, my Zipvit gel belt (£10), trainers (Mizuno Wave Rider £75) and I ran in my 1000 mile compression socks (£12).  DAC vest which has lasted 100’s of races and Karrimor shorts.

My post run analysis shows I ran in Zone 4, Lactate Sub Threshold (right at the bottom of this).  My Garmin VO2 max continues to improve and I feel very strong at the moment, I almost wish VLM was this week, I am very hopeful for a PB at London.  Its just about being able to endure the pain for as long as possible, and that is mainly a mental thing.

I went through 10k in under 38 minutes, 10 miles in 61 minutes, half marathon in 81 minutes and 20 miles in 2:06.  I know I was slowing but if I had gone on for the marathon distance I think I would have got around 2:50:00.  Which is great on tired legs.

Today I did a gentle recovery run, 4 miles at 7:16 pace.  Felt so easy, a bit quick really.

Tune from 1994 played at Diztruxshon, Uprising and BYO.  If I raced to music this would be it.

This remains one of the hardest races to enter, you have about 60 seconds to get sorted before it sells out.  This year, myself and Rose decided to stay over the night before the race at a hotel about 600m away from the start.  Nice food, drink and accommodation.  Not very nice weather….

On Friday evening the chance of the race being cancelled existed, depending on the amount of the snow on the roads in the morning.  Hardly any snow fell overnight, but light snow was falling from 7am.  The race was on.

Quick drive to the Race HQ to collect our numbers and dibber and back to the warm car.  We were reading -1 degrees C, with a wind chill of -10.  I decided to set off with 3 layers on.  We all ran with extra kit, the risk was if you got injured or lost or conditions got very bad, you had to take care you yourself whilst waiting for help.

We met up with the other Doncaster AC runners at the event, Janet Hampson and Luke Osbon, and it was great to see Chris Lawson.  We took the necessary selfies and made our way to the start.

Its a fast start with a bottleneck only 200m from the start and then onto narrow trails with stiles, even near the front of the field you get stuck.

The 1st climb

1.5 miles in to the race is the first climb out of Froggatt, this climb is 529 feet in less than 1 mile on muddy paths and grass.  I decided to take my coat off and put it in my pack on this climb.  Then a quick descent down to Eyam, through the village and then a gentle climb along bridleways, fields, many stiles and a bit of road, at the top we got a great view of Cressbrook.

The fast bit of the race starts now, 7.3 miles to 11.7 miiles basically all down hill on farm tracks down to Great Longstone, then on to the Monsal Trail to Bakewell.

The second major climb soon started, 391 feet in 0.4 miles, lots of walking on this muddy section.  Then running along wide open muddy fields down to Edensor, Chatsworth and Baslow.  Difficult to get speed up due to the conditions.

And on to the final climb, a very tough 677 feet in 2 miles.  Then technical running on the flat and descent back down to Grindleford.

I have not spoken about the weather yet, at times the conditions were the worse I had ever run in with horizontal snow blizzards, any exposed skin was in discomfort but its difficult to cover up the mouth and nose as my glasses mist up.  Visibility was poor on the most technical sections and soft snow covered up rocks, so the risk of injury is high.  I decided not to run hard on the descents given this danger.  You know its cold when your shoe laces have frozen solid and you put a buff on and it is solid ice.

The race was about 0.4 miles longer than last year and the conditions were a lot worse.

592 finished.  I could be disappointed with my time but I am not because of the conditions and I ran some of the more difficult climbs well.  You might have thought the ground would be frozen but it was not lol.

Great refreshments at the finish with coffee, soup and cake.  My GPS track is below.