Urine the colour of Lucozade...

Yesterday was the last but one tough run of the training plan, and the longest tempo run of the plan too.

Here's how it went, in numbers:

• 2 miles warm up @ 8:45 pace
• Mile 1 @ 7:27
• Mile 2 @ 7:26
• Mile 3 @ 7:28
• Mile 4 @ 7:28
• Mile 5 @ 7:28
• Mile 6 @ 7:27
• Mile 7 @ 7:29
• Mile 8 @ 7:29
• Mile 8.5 @ 7:24
• 2 miles cool down @ 8:54

Generally quite pleased with that. At 7:27 a mile the average pace isn't a great deal lower (if at all) than previous half marathon paced tempo runs and I could really feel it in that last mile and a half but the splits are by far the most consistent and, bottom line, it was just below target pace of 7:30 for the toughest tempo in the plan.

Afterwards I really felt shattered. My glutes and quads were sore (and the former had been when running), I struggled to summon the energy even to shower for a while. Having said that, my glutes were sore before I even started and the tiredness was dehydration.

That last point is a good one to remember ahead of Paris. I thought I drank well enough on Wednesday and pre-run yesterday. When I got into the car afterwards I drank 200ml of water and had the same amount of protein shake when I got in, as well as a mug of roibos tea. Yet I only peed once in several hours and felt so exhausted in the last stages of the tempo and cool down but also afterwards. Assume I wasn't quite as hydrated as I thought and 12.5 miles in warm weather at half pace makes for a lot of water usage one way or another.

So, special attention to hydration in the 2 days before and a steady amount of water during - even if it means losing a bit of time for pee breaks!

I may learn more on this from tomorrow's marathon pace run.