Last week was the highest mileage since the week of the Marathon de Paris at 31.6 miles.

Despite a recalcitrant Garmin I managed 4.21 miles round Adel on Monday while Beth did her last session at the junior running club before the break for the summer holidays. The same afternoon I volunteered to take part in the Washburn Valley Relay event for the club as there were two teams 'spare'.

On Tuesday I headed to Swinsty & Fewston reservoirs with a group from Abbey Runners to 'recce' the course where we ran legs 2 & 3 in torrential rain, thunder and lightning. 7.14 soaking miles in total.

Wednesday was a 3 mile run with the ever improving Bethan before a rest day on Thursday.

Friday was the day of the relay where I ran the 3.26 mile leg 3 in 25:20. Overall I was happy enough with that. I overtook one runner and was passed by another but for the most part had nobody in sight in front or behind. That made it tougher mentally to keep pushing myself and I'm fairly certain that had there been a 'target' in sight or the route been on a drier track or tarmac the pace would have been higher.

Saturday morning was another run with Beth, who broke her record for 2 miles by a whopping 53 seconds! Then on Sunday I did my 6th run for the week, a 12 mile LSR.

That proved a little bit toughr than expected. It was quicker by some way than the sort of pace I was running before deliberately increasing my cadence a few weeks ago but also 25s a mile slower than the pace I'd done 10 miles in a fortnight before. The last couple of miles did feel noticeably tougher and the top of my right quadricep muscle felt fatigued, but I guess it was the 6th run of the week, the highest mileage for 4 months, the longest run since Paris and only 36hrs after running in a race.

The prospect of doubling it and then adding on 2.2 miles seemed ridiculous but with 8 1/2 months to go I think I've time to build it up again!