Well here we are at the end of Week 8. So this week is massively notable for two things – actually it’s only really one thing, the Great North Run, but just ‘notable’ for the other (the half way point of our training) 😊.

So, the half way point to New York has arrived. We’ve done 288 miles in eight weeks. That’s an average of nearly 37 miles a week, or 5.3 miles a day. It doesn’t sound that much when you put it like that, but it feels like it is! There hasn’t yet been a time when I didn’t think I was going to reach the half way point too, and that’s a mighty good thing as well.

I’m (help me for saying this, please!!) so far injury free, and feel like I can do the other 307 training miles that the next 7 and a half weeks too. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and let’s enjoy the present, as this week has been pretty much all about the world’s biggest half marathon, The Great North Run. The GNR ended up being very notable for reasons other than the run, but see further below for that……

Yes there were other runs during week 8 too: A six mile easy run on Tuesday to loosen the legs after last Sunday’s epic 20 miler; A seven mile tempo run (9 minute miles for me) on Wednesday; and a six mile fartlek session (with a four mile pyramid in the middle), but they were all just a prelude for me. Melanie didn’t do the Thursday run as she had a great reason (we don’t do ‘excuses’!), in that it was her birthday. We went out for a lovely meal in a village pub in the evening with her mum and her daughters. It was quite special :).

On Friday we travelled up to my homeland, a 260 mile from Cambridge. South Shields is where I grew up, and was the home of my parents (both sadly no longer with us) for just shy of 50 years. It’s also the finishing point of the Great North Run, and so as I may have said before along the way (!) it is rather special and nostalgic for me.

The Saturday schedule called for a 4 mile easy run. The Sunday run called for a half marathon race on the programme, and it fell exactly on the day of the GNR – so it was meant to be! But then, the real fun started……….

Upon getting up on the Saturday, and with one of us slightly the worse than the other after a few glasses of wine when we got to South Shields (I won’t say which one of us it was, but it wasn’t me!!!), we firstly decided not to do the Saturday run. SHOCK HORROR!! I was ok with this, on the basis that as we were doing the GNR the next day, as it would leave us both fresh for the run, and also we were going to go for a few walks, to the pier, and along the beach, and in Newcastle, so I figured we were getting plenty of exercise anyway.

And after a first lovely walk along the pier and the North Foreshore in South Shields in sunny if windy weather, we headed in the car to Marsden Beach and had a really nice walk along one of my favourite parts of our beautiful coastline. And then ‘it’ happened. We got back to the car and I couldn’t find my car keys! Now I’m sometimes a bit hopeless with keys, and can’t remember the number of times I’ve exclaimed “I’ve lost my keys”, but this time I think I knew I’d meant it. I had no idea, even though we’d only been out about 40 minutes or so, what I could have done with them.

We thus (and Melanie had the patience and understanding of a saint it is very fair to say) retraced our steps, and walked along the grass, the steps and along the beach for another (more than) 40 minutes to see if we could hopefully see them. Talk about a needle in a haystack though on a beach with lots of pebbles! After at least three searches, and asking a local pub, and a couple of ice cream kiosks (the only places within physical proximity to the beach we were on), I knew they were lost, as in properly lost! We’d been down there now for over three hours all told.

Then the real fun started, as we had not only no access to the car, but also the keys for the house we were staying in were in the car too, and also all of Melanie’s running stuff and handbag were all locked in the car! Then after a lot of phone calls to either people I knew locally, or to the AA, to auto locksmiths, it became obvious that you cannot get access to a Mercedes Cabriolet for love nor money. Not without the official key anyway (or possibly a very large sledgehammer, but that I decided wouldn’t be very sensible as it wouldn’t help me to drive the car anywhere).

To cut what is a very long story short, the ultimate outcome was that I ended up hiring a car from Newcastle Airport (itself 45 minutes away, via a taxi journey) and making the decision to drive to my house to retrieve my spare car key. The only thing is, my house is 300 miles (each way) away, and I didn’t have my house key either (as it on the keyring that I’ve just lost somewhere on the beach!!). I did thankfully think that I had a spare key hidden in my garage, but wasn’t really sure, and so spent the whole of the five hour journey worried that I was going to have to break into my own house, to hopefully find my spare car key that I wasn’t sure where I’d put either! Nightmare!!

Thankfully when we got there I found both keys, which just proves how reliable I am with looking after things!!! Then of course we had to drive back straight away (when I say we, I mean me, as the hire firm wouldn’t put Melanie on the insurance) and also I drove back hoping that the lost keys hadn’t been picked up by someone who fancied nicking themselves a shiny new car – gulp!

The drive was over 10 hours in total, and we got back eventually (the car was still there, thankfully, along with all of the contents) at after 3am to Kate’s house where we were staying. So then after about three hours sleep it was up and out of the house to get a Metro train to Newcastle for the Great North Run. It’s safe to say that we were both a tad tired! And to show how tired Melanie was, when we got to the Metro station and I bought us a one way ticket up to Newcastle she asked me “how are we getting back here?”. The penny soon dropped that it might involve a half marathon 🙂 At least I think that was because she was tired……!

The run itself was hard work on three hours sleep and no proper nourishment (a grabbed sandwich and a bag of crisps from a motorway service station is not exactly ideal prep we discovered). It was however an absolutely spectacular day as far as weather is concerned. Cool at the start at around 11 degrees, but warming to 15 under totally cloudless skies, with little wind. It felt much warmer though, and we were feeling it.

After a bit of a long wait (15 minutes or so) to get over the starting line, we set out a bit too fast at about 8:25 pace (having intended to run it at about 9 minute pace as it was only a training run after all), and after about three or four miles we were feeling the effects. Melanie started to suffer a bit, and almost every mile from there to mile 12 got progressively slower. By mile 12 we were at about 9:30 pace, and I was trying to help her by getting water and gels and the like, and was a bit worried about her, as she said her breathing was suffering too. Thankfully she got her second wind for the last mile, and that was at around 8:25 pace again.

We finished in 1:56:02, and hand in hand, which was really nice. She’d told me at one point along the way to run ahead and go for my own time, but I said no. She’d been very patient with me losing my keys the day before, and we are a team irrespective. We are in this together, all the way to New York, and even if I had been interested in a time yesterday (I wasn’t) then I would have still stayed with her regardless of time or pace. As it is, 1:56 is still quicker than we had probably intended to run, and was her best time at the GNR, her third time there like me.

Regardless of outcome, we both definitely learned (as if we didn’t know already!) the huge importance of pacing/not going out too quickly on race day, and won’t be making that mistake in New York. I also realised that doing 9 min miles x 26.2, very much untried territory for me, is going to be a very tough gig indeed.

The GNR was otherwise as wonderful an occasion as it always is. It has more nostalgia and memory lane trips than I can possibly talk about here. It is true to say that as tired as I was then I wasn’t taking all of them in as much as I normally would, and certainly Melanie was so tired that I thought her eyes were actually going to close altogether at one point! The main thing is that we got through it all unscathed, did it together every step of the way, and chalked it off to ‘definitely one for the scrapbook’ after the adventure we’d had with the car. I also counted afterwards that I’d driven over 1,300 miles this weekend, and that might just be a bit too much for me!!

I can’t finish this week’s post without saying a huge and massive thank you to John Brown, without whom this run with Melanie wouldn’t have been possible, as he’s responsible for her being called Louise in the picture above! John and his wife Janine also came to try to help find my keys on the Saturday, without me asking them to. That’s wonderful in my book, and thank you both so very much from us both. Thanks also hugely to Kate and her husband Mark who put us up for two nights at their house in South Shields, even though they were away for the weekend. Very lovely to see you both, and will look forward to the next time very much indeed.

So that’s us half way then. Week 9 looks absolutely horrible by the way – 44 miles culminating with a 20 miler on Sunday. I’m already thinking that the two pairs of trainers I bought for training are not enough, and am realising that I have a long way to go in so many ways. My other lesson learned this week is that at £342 for a lost key repacement from Mercedes, that I’d better not be such an idiot and ever do that again!!