Going the distance

At last! I've run a half-marathon distance. In fact, I've run more than a half-marathon distance - 13.84 miles. Part of Marshal Zhukov's "train hard, fight easy" philosophy. I think that I said a few weeks ago that I intended to do at least one training run over the full distance, so that, come the day, I wouldn't find the extra couple of miles from my previous longest run as an unwelcome surprise. Certainly, this much extra (my previous longest, a month ago, was only just over 11 miles, so this is nearly 3 miles further) gave me some real grief on the homeward stretch. The course that I'd plotted was home to Coalport, then back up the long slog as far as Aqueduct, then turn around and go back down, and then back up. The result was doing the climb out of Coalport twice, intentionally, since it looks as if this climb is going to be what sorts out the men from the boys, after about 9 miles of running. It was a hard run, enlivened by passing groups of people whom I'd already seen as I went down (or up). One pair of women I passed as I approached Aqueduct on the first climb, passed them again as I headed back down, and then passed them again as I climbed back up again!
The time, 2 hours 15 minutes, was disappointing considering my target time, and the predicted times that I'm getting. I'm just going to have to push it a bit harder this week, before beginning to taper down my effort in the last fortnight.
And today, I received eMail notification that my race number (142) should be with my in the post in a few days.