22 miles of sheer mental torture

22 miles on the treadmill... 22 miles of looking at the same wall... 22 miles of looking at the same door stop. Jesus that was a tough one, but so glad I did it, as the calf came through intact and so did i figuratively speaking, as I've been under the weather this week, and although the time was OK, I'm just pleased to have done the 22 miles without any major issues.

To be fair, the first 2 hours were OK on the treadmill, it was the last 10km or so that really got to me mentally. I was getting quite tired also, so I dropped the speed from my marathon target time of 11.2kms per hour to 10.5kms per hour. Plus I tried out a gel for the first time, and boy does it boost you. Really good for when you're hitting rock bottom me thinks, so I'll take a couple of those with me on the marathon proper. However the last 5kms I got the speed back up to 11kms, so it was good to actually increase the speed for the last 5kms, which shows that I'm feeling strong towards the end of the run, and looking back, the last 4 miles were certainly possible me thinks.

So all in all I went round in just over 3hrs 10 mins for 22 miles, which was OK like I said, but probably around 15 secs a mile slower than I normally would go round in. But like I said, given that I have a headcold, I'm pretty pleased.

So... last long run done now, and that's three 20+ milers in the bag ahead of the marathon, which is OK. Would have liked to have done four, but then sometimes you can't always do it. Now on taper for 2 weeks (thank god), and will do around 40 miles next week, and then 30 the week before, and then 2-3 short runs in marathon week. The taper is welcome relief to be honest, I've been feeling it in the last few weeks, and when the marathon is done, it will be time to think about what's next. The good thing is that I'm taking the emphasis off this marathon now. I was too obsessed previously, and was losing sight of the real goal, the MDS next year. So I'll run Canberra hard and to the best of my ability, but March next year is where my sights are set... plus that's the last run of that distance I'll ever do on a treadmill!