Freakishly Flat

I had been looking forward to this run for ages. Week in, week out, I had been slowly incrementing my long runs, starting at 10 km and building up by 6 to 10% each time. I had run over the moors, up and down hills and in ever decreasing circles until I had reached 19.13 km with somewhere between 296 to 326 m of ascent. Now I was ready to tackle half marathon distance and I was (perversely) excited. By strange coincidence, it is also almost exactly that distance between Shipley and Leeds, along the canal, and so, as a special treat to myself, I thought I would try running the longer distance on a flat route - because canals don't have hills, right?

'Oh look - a hill'. Somewhere near Armley Gyratory.

At the last minute I decided it made more sense to catch a train to Leeds and run back to Shipley, so, at 10.38 am I set off from outside Leeds Station. Soon I settled into my stride but a comfortable slow pace seemed rather quicker than intended and I tried hard to slow myself down, knowing how much further I had to go. But there was something odd about this run, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then I realised - I had run several kilometres and I hadn't run up a hill. Weird.

It transpires that canals do have to tackle hills and I was somewhat amused, when arriving at the first lock, to realise I had chosen, unintentionally, to run the route the way round that went up them all...

Eventually, I reached 12 km and realised my hip was hurting from the regularity of running on an even surface, but I refused to give up. Painfully slowly the kilometres ticked by, as I passed through places I had never been and, in several cases, did not know even existed. By 16 or 17 km my hip really hurt and my pace felt like it had dropped considerably - it was hard to know though, as my GPS watch does not deal well with cities or woods!

Uncharted territory near Rodley

Finally I recognised the edge of Shipley and hobbled on for an excruciatingly slow final kilometre, desperate to reach my target distance, but also desperate to stop running. Finally Ellis Briggs' cyle shop honed into view and I pushed on up the path and onto the bridge, where my legs finally said 'no more' and I ground to a halt.

But as sore and stiff as I was immediately afterwards, I had done it - 21.11 km, 13.12 miles, 2:19:07. I'm pretty chuffed with that!

Ever decreasing pace!