Nine and a half weeks

A really good run this morning, though it is getting seriously dark in the mornings now. I went out at 6.45am, very nearly a full hour before sunrise. I'll have to get a back-lit watch; I was having to peer hard to make out the time as I passed under the streetlights. And I failed to notice a large puddle lurking on Milton Road. Things should improve for a while at least when the clocks go back next week.

With the Ely 10k nine and a half weeks away I'll need to start doing longer runs. I ran the very-nearly-3k route this morning, in 18:30. That scales up to 63:08 for 10k, though of course it would be a bit slower than that. My race goal is simply to finish, though if I can (i) run all the way and (ii) beat 60 minutes I'll be well pleased. My intervals are run 7/walk 1 now; after I get to 10/1 I'll stop walking entirely. And that'll be quite a milestone.

I know my race number already: 133. They simply allocate them sequentially. There were 561 finishers last year (of whom 471 finished in under an hour). I'm pleased to see that the route passes through the small fenland village of California.