I was up and out early (since I was awake anyway) so that I could get out and back through the tunnel before they closed it a 09:30. I was also hoping that my new Garmin would be put out for delivery today (instead of tomorrow) since it arrived at the depot in the early hours of yesterday morning, and didn’t want to miss it.

All of my training recently has been geared towards the marathon in October, but I do have the half on Sunday and am hoping to run it in 1:45:00 (or rather in 1:44:59). This means running 8 minute miles (or just under because you always run a little further than race distance), something I have not done in training. Today was scheduled to be a tempo/threshold 9-miler, which would be 08:23 min/mile, but I decided to push it to see if I could maintain 8 minute miles.

It took a while to get up to pace (plus there were a fair few roads to cross), but I managed to hover around the 8 minute mile pace before hitting the tunnel, then sped up as I knew I had to get back before they closed it, taking on a gel at speed (good practice) just after I turned around. The tunnel throws the pace out (I travel through it around the 3 and 6 mile marks), but I maintained and even managed to speed up towards the end. That’s one thing less to worry about, hopefully. I could probably run the half faster than 1:45:00, but marathon training has priority at the moment. I might aim for 1:40:00 at Bath next March.