The Sunday long run around Malpas

Today was the long run: two hours easy, 20.8k in the country lanes. Fairly rolling elevation, a beautiful day, maybe a bit humid if I'm being extra fussy, but perfect really. I rate the running around Malpas as good as anywhere. The pace was deliberately slow. I couldn't have got the whole thing done if I'd pushed it any more.

I thought this was my longest run since before my holiday. It turns out I have to go back further than that. It's my longest run of any kind since the Spartan Beast on 16 May, and my longest normal training run since 19 April. The splits came out dead even, each 5k within half a minute of the last.

I didn't take any water or food, and ran fasted, though I'd had plenty to drink beforehand. It's part of a deliberate pattern while I'm experimenting with the carnivore diet: a lot of my runs are done without food or water to stimulate the adaptive response, hoping it pays off on race day when I do fuel. At the events I've done this year I've felt pretty good.

The plan for the next few weeks is more easy running to build volume, agreed with my running coach, and the fitness work stays on the roads. The Ultra is cross-country, lots of elevation, muddy, boggy, varied terrain, so the terrain work goes on my easy days. At the moment that's one day a week, Friday with the weight vest, and I might increase it so two of my three easy runs are cross-country and off-road. The race itself is billed as 50k, but by the time you get to the course it's always a bit longer, and penalty loops are common, so you can end up running 55k in total.

There are a few hard weeks ahead to get my fitness levels back. My body isn't used to intense exercise at the moment, so it's just a case of coaxing it back to where it was. You can't rush the progress, or you risk setting yourself back, getting injured, or not executing the workout properly. Everything is moving in the right direction though. I'm not quite back to pre-holiday level, and my body weight is still up, but it feels good to be getting the volume back up with a long run. There's still a lot of progress needed to up the intensity levels and lower my body fat.