Alternate Title - "How to mess up your race prep and get away with it"
One of the hardest things about this stage of marathon training is how much it dominates and affects your weekend. Particularly Saturday night - which becomes, well, a bit boring. No booze, no going out, nothing too exciting as you conserve your energy for the Sunday morning exertions.
Still, it at least gives you time to get all your prep sorted for the next day, especially if you're heading to a race.
Well, that's the theory anyway. The reality this week was a little different though......I did have my kit sorted and race number attached OK the night before - but managed to forget my Garmin watch, realise way too late that I had no gels and then discovered my iPod shuffle was out of charge.
To cap it all my well-planned timeline for pre-race eating and travel turned out to be a little tight for comfort. Frantically searching the roads of Hampton Wick 20 minutes before race start looking for a parking space was not what I had anticipated.
Still, I made it to the start in time (after a warm-up of running hard from car over Kingston Bridge!) and at 8.35 or so I was off.
The Breakfast run has 8, 16 and 20 mile options....I was doing the 16 mile variant and, as always, it was a reminder of why races in a training calendar are both important and helpful. Important as they provide a handy status check on how the training is going and experience of running with hundreds of other runners (as opposed to a handful, or none), and helpful as they are essentially easier than a solo training run of the same distance. Water is provided (no need to carry extra weight), the course is marked (no worrying over route or risking getting lost) and you get plenty of support and encouragement from the marshals and crowds.
The route itself consisted of 2 x 8 mile laps. Started out in Kingston's town centre by the town hall, before heading over Kingston Bridge and down left onto the towpath. This takes you ~3 miles to Hampton Court Bridge and is probably the nicest portion of the race. Once at Hampton Bridge you go back onto the roads (so running on footpaths etc) and follow the A309 down through Thames Ditton. Eventually you intersect with the A309 / Portsmouth Road and follow that back into Kingston itself before looping back out on the second lap. It's a nice flat course but the section coming back into Kingston is a bit tricky - narrow paths with uneven camber which is always a concern for my glute.
All in all it was a comfortable race - plenty of support and it was good to see several of my extended running group there...before, during and after the race!
Sore legs? What sore legs?
I was quite pleased with my pace given the missing Garmin (finished in 2:35:09, pretty much perfect LSR pace of 9:40 min/mile) and felt in good shape all the way through - with 5 weeks to go till marathon day everything so far is going to plan. Next stop is the longest one - 20 miles at "Not the London Marathon" in Bushy...after a day of parkrun Ambassadoring on the Saturday!
As for the Kingston Breakfast Run - I'd do it again - but ideally with some better prep :-)
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