Half Marathon - Blog 3: Running Not Jogging

Something has changed. It was deliberate but I am surprised by the effect.

On Sunday afternoon Pete offered to join me for my long run. I explained I was planning an outing of 100 minutes. [I prefer to say the time in number of minutes rather than '1hr 40mins'. It feels less daunting.] We agreed that since he hasn’t been training he’d come for an hour or so and then I’d carry on alone.

Pete has some natural ability as a runner, unlike me, so without 13 weeks of build up he’d probably survive a 100 minute run. I wasn’t solely concerned about him. On the one hand, it’s good for me to have him along breathing easy bouncing along while I’m feeling energised, but I know that towards the end of my long haul mission I prefer to suffer alone.

As on previous runs he let me set the pace. Several times he commented on how much faster I was since we last ran together, about 6 weeks ago. I could claim that all the hours and miles I have put have delivered this transformation, but no. What I have done is take bigger strides.

Last week, for variety, I consciously started taking longer steps while keeping the same pace. I discovered my body mostly measures effort in steps per minute (and gradient of hills). It is far less concerned about how long my stride is. If only I’d know it was so simple, I would have done this ages ago. I feel I have finally graduated from jogging to running.

After over an hour I was flagging, my body obviously had figured out my trick. During a brief water stop at home Pete bowed out gracefully offering to make dinner while I completed another short loop. Alone for those last 20 minutes I was distinctly slower than with his company but I finished happy knowing that I have moved up a gear.