The Long Road to Nowhere!
Saturday 17th January and although bright it still feels cold outside. Jess had been on the early at work and having missed a week due to sudden weekend away I wasn’t feeling the most motivated.
We had knew we had to run for 2 hours but we were struggling to find a route. I thought a run from my house to Farningham and back would do the trick. It was about 12 miles and having missed a week and knowing we would have to go up the hill on Princes Road on the way back we wouldn’t be far off 2 hours.
We set off and we both found the first 3/4 miles hard going. I thought this may be down to the fact we were running in the afternoon because we seem to run better early in the morning. We had run for about 5 miles along the Hawley road towards Farningham when we run out of path. We were both wearing black and it was starting to get dark. We took the decision to head back as I thought this would be harder and we had been running for 55 minutes.
The turn also inspired us and with the wind now at our backs and the legs fully warmed up we found the going relatively easy. Before we knew it we were back at Shepherds Lane, in complete darkness 10 minutes from home and we had only been running 1 1/2 hours. The only concerning point was we had both drunk all our water. So, we ran to my house in 1 hour 40 minutes refilled our water bottles and set out again.
To say the last twenty minutes were complete torture is an understatement. Running a lap around my house having run to Farningham and back with all roads leading home to a hot shower seemed like madness.
We finally finished after 2 hours 6 minutes and having run 12.6 miles (approx 20 km). A real positive is that although we were tired the amount of pain was not significant and in reality would could have run for another twenty minutes.
I don’t know how long we need to run next week but if anybody knows of a 13 ish mile flat run then please let me know!
