Ouch. I keep forgetting how far 21km is. It’s far.

This morning, ahead of a trip to India for a family wedding I ran the ridiculous distance again – hoping to improve on my previous 20k+ effort. And I think I did – maintaining a split of 6m30 per for the duration of the 2h19 minutes I was running (that’s a LOT of running). The run data is on Runkeeper here.

It was tough going though – the first 10.5k were OK but the return trip got fairly gruelling. I’d foolishly opted for no vaseline as my new running shirts had arrived (needed to apply it mid-run when I hit the 12k mark) and my endurance began to flag then too – having maintained a target beating split of 6m16 per km on the way out, the return trip saw me lose a second or two per kilometer until I finished with the final average split. The voice prompts in Runkeeper continue to be an excellent motivating force.

I crossed the 13.1m barrier (21.1k) after 2h17 minutes or thereabouts – which means that the road to the sub-2-hour half marathon is pretty steep – need to shave a minute off my splits, give or take. But I’ve got time, and am planning on dialling some interval training into Runkeeper to help with my speed training.

Any tips from anyone out there? I’m continuing to subscribe to Sensei Paul’s school of thinking that any miles under my belt will help, even if the training is slightly haphazard, so pleased that I managed to achieve the distance again.