14 miles ... ouch

As the time for Challenge No. 2 (the Milton Keynes half-marathon) is fast approaching, I decided at the weekend to stop messing around with adding one mile at a time to my schedule and just go and do it. I'd done 8 miles fairly comfortably and thought it was 6 miles round Pitsford Reservoir, so set out on a sunny Saturday morning to do two laps and see how it went.

Pitsford is lovely first thing in the morning. There were some cyclists but not too many; some other runners but no other dog-walkers, which was a bonus as I had Alfie with me, and he's a pest with other dogs. (He's a pest with chasing bicycles / birds /random bits of rubbish too but that seemed to awaken his interest in the run so may not be a bad thing).

We took the first lap fairly easy as I didn't want to overdo it and it was going to get very warm again by the time we did the second. Pitsford has the added advantage of being flat, and although Northamptonshire is not the hilliest county in England, you soon find, if you cycle or run any distance, that there will be at least one steep incline somewhere on the route.

Andy was walking the route and my hope was that I'd overtake somewhere on the second lap and hand Alfie over for a rest. Alas, we were slower than we thought and he was faster. The reason was clear when we'd finished and measured the distance - closer to seven miles than six, and so the run was a shade under 14 miles total. Even with walking the last half-mile or so I did it in two and a half hours. Now the challenge is to do the distance comfortably, and work on being able to walk properly for the next few days afterwards. I tried ice, I tried a freezing gel (the opposite of Deep Heat) and I tried rest. My legs have never hurt so much! Alfie, however, was fine after the run. He had a drink and tried chasing some geese and looked as if nothing had happened.

So next Saturday we're going out again to see if it will be easier this time!