Training Tales

The Big 3-0. My Longest Ever Run!

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Nicole

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Sunday 9 February 2025

Week 5, Day 7: 30km Long Run

My longest ever run and the first time I’ve ever run into the thirties! Crazy!

Today’s word-of-the-day was ‘easy‘. Given my right knee has been giving me some grief, and we had XC yesterday, Jo was very strict. “Keep it easy, Very easy.”

This one scared me a bit. 30km. That’s like, 2 ½ hours of running. I’ve never ran that far or for that long. And I would be on my own with no one to chat to and only Steve Magness and Rich Roll to keep me company.

I headed out.

Almost immediately I stopped.

Brainwave! I’ve never used the alerting system on my watch, but I quickly programmed in a ‘too fast’ alert so my watch would beep if I went faster than 4:50/km pace. I also added a ‘too slow’ alert for paces slower than 5:00/km. I quickly turned this one off to stop the almost continuous beeping. This proved to be a pretty successful strategy actually. It meant I didn’t need to endlessly fixate on my watch to check I wasn’t accidentally speeding up, which is what often tends to happen, but was getting a constant reminder if I did speed up. And the beeping noticeably stopped. At first it was really annoying, beeping every 100m or so, but after I settled into it, my watch beeped far less often.

The route I’d planned pretty much went to pot in the first 10 minutes, when I decided I fancied running down Badgeworth Lane. One of the nice things about running so far is that you can make it up on the fly, and know you’ve got 20km to play with to get back home. Nearer the end you need to be a little more on it, of course. I didn’t think Rob would come and pick me up from Bishop’s Cleeve if I got my distances wrong. But it’s really quite freeing just having nowhere particular to go for the next 2 ½ hours. Except for running back past your house of course – I try to avoid that.

30km Long Run

The run went pretty well overall.

Pacing, good.

Route, good.

Fuelling, good.

Knee? Not so good. It started hurting a little from about 8km, but didn’t really get any worse until just towards the end. I’m trying to remain calm and not worry, but my worry level has probably increased from about 2 to 4. Tomorrow is a rest day so I will rest hard, perhaps even forgoing our morning walk. I stretched, rolled and massage-gunned my ass off when I got in and will try to do some more later. I’ve also booked in for a sports massage at Pentons tomorrow, to loosen anything up which might be causing a bit of tension or stress. Let’s wait and see.

So all in all, knee excluded, another good run. I’m really chuffed with how ‘easy’ I found 30km. Yes it was long. But it was doable and I got it done.

Fuelling Notes

Pre Run

As it’s important to practise practise practise, I’ve decided I should be having my pre-race breakfast before my long runs. I know my stomach behaves differently on race day when I get nervous, but the more I can create patterns to simply repeat on race day, the better. I had a bagel topped with peanut butter and banana about 75-90 minutes before I started running.

During Run

Gels gels gels. Today I had three:

I should have had something more at 2h 20m, and I was carrying some Veloforte Lemon & Mint chews, but I just didn’t really want to open them. And as the pace was easy, I decided it was probably ok for the last 10 minutes.

Interestingly, I was ‘hungry’ on the run. The gels were fuelling me but my stomach felt empty and like it needed some real food. I’d woken up hungry but didn’t want to overeat and feel sick on my run, so I probably needed a little more food yesterday post race / pre long run. A good learning for next time.

Post Run

When I got in, Rob had finished off the milk! So I headed to the co-op for more and made myself milky coffee. Jo’s advice of ‘cows, chickens and carbs’ was ringing in my head but what I really wanted was cheesy beans on toast. I don’t think this is a bad re-fuelling decision, given half a can of baked beans has 10g of protein vs. 2-eggs’ 12-15g, so went with what I fancied and really, really enjoyed it.

For that little bit more protein, and given the beans over eggs previous decision, I finished with some yoghurt with stewed apple, raspberries and pecan nuts, another recent favourite.

Despite a good re-fuel, I know I’ll feel like a bottomless pit the rest of the afternoon. I always do after a long run! We are going out for a Harriers’ ladies meal to celebrate the end of the Midlands XC league tonight, so I hope we have some crumpets in for a tasty mid-afternoon snack.

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