After my last run I took a couple of days of recovery time since I have had a sore throat for a day or two, and today I ran again, and I astounded myself. It seems that I am a much better runner than I had previously imagined, and therefore the run home from university is not going to be as difficult as I had thought. How do I know this? Well, normally when I run I take a very hilly course and this means that I build serious endurance chops, however, there is an obvious sacrifice in terms of speed. My previous times for doing this have always hovered in the 12-13 minute miles range.

Today, however I ran a flat course. I had to pop into the town centre so I ran there and then home which is pretty much a flat course all the way. In doing so I ran 5.03 miles in 51:06. When I looked at my watch I was absolutely stunned. I expected to see at least an hour of running time. I simply could not believe what I had just done. I hadn’t really pushed myself either which means that the 10.09 minute miles I ran could easily have been sub 10 minutes and with very little strenuous effort too. This raises for me the intriguing prospect of completing a marathon in under four hours. I had been basing my potential times on my hilly runs and had, quite frankly, dreaded embarrassing myself with a time greater than five hours. The slow, agonising hill runs I have been doing have clearly conditioned my body to a greater degree than I had thought possible, and suddenly flat course marathons or ultraruns do not look so absurd to me.

Map & Data

• 5.03 miles
• 51.06 minutes
• 10.09 minute miles
• 203 ft elevation climb
• 137 average heart rate
• 807 calories burned

Consider my flabber well and truly gasted!