Don't Garden on Race Day

Another decent training run in the bag, although it's been a rather busy day. First to Junior Parkrun with my son, then off to a friend's house to pick up a new hydration pack to try out. After that I spent the rest of the morning tackling the jungle our allotment has become - first with a heavy petrol strimmer and then with a lawn mower. My shoulders will ache from just this tomorrow without doing 10 miles with the basketballs. I then bought a sack of gravel and spent 40 minutes weeding and tidying up the front driveway.
It was quite warm this morning but I knew it was going to cloud over this afternoon with rain on the way, so I went out at 4pm to do 9 laps (just over 10 miles). I was trying out a new hydration pack today, the Inov-8 Race Pro Extreme 4 Litre Running Backpack SS15 which has an unnecessarily long name but is really rather good, having all the weight of the water sat on your hips rather than your back and handy mesh pockets on the hip fins for Jelly Babies and gels. As soon as I started running today I was worried that the pack was going to chafe and that perhaps it wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be but as I ran the first mile far too quick (7:40) I took a few moments to make some adjustments and it was much better after that.
A few comments today. Nothing really worth mentioning though. I did get hit by a football (an accident I think) and I nearly squashed one of those silly toy dogs that got under my feet. Then there were the usual scooters, bikes and pedestrians to avoid. Oh, and a crazy lady started jumping around in front of me at one point, although it turned out to be a crazy lady I know - Hello Sarah!
I am still stopping briefly every mile to check my pace and have a few sips of water and I realised today that over the course of a marathon if I stop for 15 seconds every mile that adds up to 6.5 minutes. I can't really see a way round this although I might try going two miles at a time next week to see how I cope with that. It might save valuable seconds.
So I did the 9 laps I was after as the rain began on the final lap, which was 10.12 miles. My total time was 01:30:07 which despite a 7:40 first mile makes an average pace per mile of 8:54. I admit I was tiring a little towards the end but then I won't be doing any gardening the morning of the London Marathon. Last weeks pace was very fast so I hope I can fall somewhere between the two next week when I do 10 laps - about 11.25 miles.

Here comes the rain!