So this was the first week of the 3 week taper and actually I ended up doing less running than planned throughout the week. Tuesday was within plan at a 4 mile run.

As the weather was pretty poor Wednesday morning I opted to trust the weather man and went to run in the evening, the plan being to do a 5 miler. As I started off it started to rain and proceeded to rain some more, meaning that I cut the run short with a 5.11km run. On the plus side though as I was keen to get home I ended up setting a PB at 23:36 which I was quite pleased with, particularly given that I have done very little speed work with all the distance training.

Thursday again I planned to run in the morning but the rain put me off, the afternoon came and it was still raining so I took the decision to take an impromptu rest day.

Saturday was a reduced distance long run at  12 miles across the North Downs. I had ordered some new running gear for the Trail Marathon Wales so had these out to test.

I have bought some Gore trail shorts, Underarmour top and Compressisport calf guards. Obviously I didn’t want to run all new gear on the actual race in case of any unexpected discomfort and I am pleased to say all items performed admirably particularly the shorts (or as I say, passed the bollocks test). The calf guards still need more testing as I still had a bit of tightness when running, but this could be due to a lack of stretching on my part (something which I am aiming to rectify), a few more runs and I should have an idea if the calf compression can be used on runs or just for post runs.

Total distance: 19.42 miles; Total Time: 3:07:52;  Average Pace: 09:40/mi; Total calories: 2627