20 Miles Around Bluewater

No. I wasn't shopping with the wife.
But lets just get the excuses out the way before we carry on. If you're up to speed you'll know that I hadn't been able to run for 3 weeks. I did a Parkrun then went out and did 19 miles the next day. That was last weekend so I've had this week to get back on track. I was in bed before 10pm this Friday, feeling really tired and was up at 05:30 feeling ill on the Saturday. I spent most of Saturday sleeping in the beanbags or in bed and taking the maximum dose of paracetamol and ibuprofen. Naturally, when I wasn't asleep I was worrying about whether or not I'd be able to run 20 miles with basketballs the next day. Somehow I managed to convince myself that I was well enough to do this. I couldn't put it off. This was the last weekend before taper and even if I could postpone it the chances were that my friend from Petts Wood Runners, Paul Haylock, wouldn't be able to make the following weekend anyway (Paul was the only person I managed to convince to join me in the end). It had to be done this weekend and I think I just managed to convince my system to give me a few hours sabbatical to get this done.

I woke up at 03:58 on Sunday, two minutes before my alarm was due to go off. Still not feeling brilliant but convinced I was well enough to give it a go, I fueled up (had some breakfast - and another couple of paracetamol) and picked Paul up at 04:50. We made our base at Costa and got ready to start. A quick 'before' picture and we set off at 05:28.

Just before we started

I had my Garmin tied to my waist and Paul had a Garmin and his phone timing/tracking us. I had been to Bluewater earlier in the week to collect security passes and measure the circuit we'd be running accurately. A lap around the outside edge of the upper floor was 787 metres - just under half a mile. I discovered from looking at the data from a previous visit I had made with my Garmin that it didn't provide accurate enough results due to being indoors.

So we were off. And as I had Paul with me and I had given him a sheet of splits to tell us how we were doing compared to the 9 minutes per mile pace I wanted to run, I didn't worry about looking at my Garmin which was just running as a stopwatch. Paul would keep track of the laps with a clicker and tell me how we were doing for pace each lap. We started off way too quick, then eased off a little. After a few laps a security man tried to stop me bouncing the balls "because of the shop windows". Without actually stopping I told him we had permission from Rob (the security manager) and that I had passes in my pack if he wanted me to stop and get them out. It seems he didn't so we carried on.

Somewhere around 14 laps, according to Paul, we were a few minutes up so it was looking good that we'd be able to keep a 9mpm overall pace. By lap 27 we were apparently around 5 minutes up - Cruising! But then at lap 28 Paul looked at his watch and there were some worrying noises, most notably "That can't be right?!". It turns out that Paul's watch had made a flimsy satellite link and he had it set up to auto-pause, so every time it lost the link it thought we had stopped and so it stopped the timer. So as it happens, we worked out that at around 14 miles we weren't 5 minutes up, we were around 7 minutes down! quite a mental blow to deal with. We may have recovered a little of that time in the next lap or two but we never got it back entirely and actually ended up losing a bit more. I had to stop a few times to blow my nose and several times had to discretely hoik up some nastiness from the back of my throat. Also in the final few laps my left shoulder was really aching. We finished our 41 laps much slower than we started but we did it.

I was a little disheartened that this hadn't turned out to be quite the final confidence booster I had planned. But then I had to remind myself how ill I'd felt just the day before and how if this hadn't been the last hard training weekend of the most important race of my life I should've probably spent the day at home in bed again. We dumped our stuff in the car and I bought the two of us breakfast, however, I couldn't eat much of it. I dropped Paul home and went straight back to bed - which in fairness isn't unusual for me after a long run but I wasn't just tired this time, I was ill. So ill in fact that I couldn't even be bothered to get up and write this. It's Monday afternoon now and I'm still feeling shabby and have very little appetite. If I wasn't self employed I'd've probably quite legitimately taken the day off. BUT! I am now convinced that if I can do 20 miles under those conditions, I can certainly still break this record on the day. As with any race for any runner it all depends on how you feel on the day.

In other news, Guinness World Records emailed me this morning asking if I would take part in some filming next week. They said (amongst other things): "The video gives you the chance to talk about your GWR attempt at London and your training and impact it's had on fundraising etc". This is probably going to happen next Wednesday so it would be great if I could say what a marvellous flood of generous sponsorship I've had in the last week! I'll just leave this here:
www.virginmoneygiving.com/kevhowarth

Paul Haylock who was mad enough to get up at silly o'clock and run with me is also running the VMLM for a great cause - Cardiomyopathy UK. You can find out more here:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Paul-Haylock2

Oh! and I nearly forgot. I'm in the latest edition of Runner's World. P41.

Paul's gadgets got a bit confused!

The grey dots represent each time it thinks we stopped!

 

The 'after' shot