Coming off the high of last week (Dad’s PB and our longest continuous run), this week has also been a great one. We’ve definitely found our stride, if you pardon the pun, and every aspect of our running seems to be improving so much, we’re actually surprising ourselves!

As per usual, we ran twice in the week, Tuesday and Thursday; both very different runs. Tuesday was a fairly regular route for us, with a difference: we ran basically all of it! Pretty much all of our training so far has been a rather loose interpretation of Jeff Galloway’s ‘run-walk-run’ method, whereby walking breaks are encouraged so as not to overdo it or cause injury, but following our first continuous 5K last week, we’ve really found the kick up the backside to keep going, knowing that we can. We did walk a steep bit of hill, but other than that, we ran the full distance.

Thursday was a split run – we ran down to my nan’s house, about 3k, stopped off there for a quick visit, and then ran back home, so about 6-6.5k altogether. Generally, the outward journey is downhill, and the homebound uphill, but we tried to push ourselves as much as possible. Yes, we hate hills, but they do appear in most of our routes, so they’re pretty much an inevitable part of any run. When possible, we run what we can, but personally I don’t see any shame in walking them because it does save straining ourselves, and it still works our legs pretty hard.

Saturday was a 10-miler. Its the first really long distance we’ve done since we got back into training after Japan, but with the successes of the last week in mind we kept fairly positive. The route was chosen based on us having a pretty good knowledge of the distances of certain legs, and that helps us keep pace and also have an idea of the end goal, so off we set..

We ran at a slightly slower than usual pace, and comfortably completed the first 5k in about 33 minutes – not too shabby – but we kept on running. Comfortably, we hit the 6k mark, and then the 7k mark, and were basically shocking ourselves as we kept going! We decided that we would stop at the halfway mark – 5 miles/8k – mainly because I needed the toilet, and also to take on a little bit of fuel, but super proud of ourselves for running that whole distance without stopping to walk! Quick loo stop, fuel loaded, and off we went again, running all the way to the 14k mark before we reached a nasty hill that we walked, and then stormed the last stretch home!

Overall, we actually did about 10.1 miles in 1hr 58 (including our toilet stop!) and more importantly, feeling as if we could go on for another 3 miles quite happily! Knowing that, I feel totally confident in our ability to run the full half marathon in 2.5 hours, especially with another 3-4 months training.

Yep, pretty happy this week! Next week I’ll be running my first ever Tough Mudder race, which will be something a little different and I’m totally terrified, so be sure to send lots of pixie dust my way!

°o°