One of the inevitable things about training properly for a marathon is that you have to run a long way in training. Depending on the programme you're following this will usually mean at least one run of about 20 miles a few weeks before the big day. Of course you build up to this slowly, adding a mile to your weekly long run over the months leading up to that final 20 mile training run. And for most people who enter a marathon I'm guessing that the furthest they would normally run (when not training for a marathon) would be somewhere about 10-13 miles.
So once those long runs get beyond about 12 or 13 miles, and start taking over 2 hours to complete, you start to ache a bit during the last few miles.
One thing I realised during this week's 14 miler was that running anywhere close to home with about 4 miles to go provides incredible temptation to take a short cut and call it a day. After all, 11 or 12 miles is still a good effort - right? Instead it would be much better to be 7 miles from home at the halfway point because then the motivation to run 14 miles is simply the motivation of getting home.
So this week, this is roughly where I'll be at the half-way point of my long run - and once I've got this far I have no option but to turn around and run the 7.5 miles back home again.
