Back from Portugal

I arrived back from Portugal today. We had a good break of six days with variable weather, three nice hot and sunny days with three overcast and at times rainy weather in between. Louise Kane and myself stayed in a two bedroom villa on the Algarve coast next to a golf course.

I managed to keep up the running whilst away and I will attempt to summarise it as best as I can in this post. I left my stopwatch in the UK, so the run times are not accurate, on the first run I didn't time it at all.

Wednesday 20th Feb (scheduled for 45 minutes easy pace)
We arrived early in the morning; in the afternoon I attempted to follow the 7.2 mile route that I had worked out on the internet on the previous evening. I had written out detailed instructions. The first 5.5 miles went well, in fact it was a really nice run, what had looked like fairly major tarmac roads were dirt tracks and the route was rural, encountering very few vehicles.
After 5.5 miles I missed a right hand turn, this didn't affect me too much and was actually a short cut. Once I was back at the start, I tried to work out where I had gone wrong by running the last section of the route backwards to rejoin the circuit where I missed my right turn.
I ended up getting dreadfully lost and eventually found myself back on the original circuit at around the four mile mark. This time I managed to run home by the correct route.
I have just retraced my steps on the internet and I ran for a total of 13.4 miles. I have no idea how long I was out for, but I know I was absolutely knackered - it was a long run and it was a hot day.

Thursday 21st Feb (scheduled for 45 minutes easy pace)
It was another hot day, this time I ran the 7.2 mile route as intended.
Run stats: Approx 53 mins, 7.2 miles - 7:22 minutes per mile

Friday 22nd Feb (scheduled for 70 minutes race pace)
Friday was a bit gloomy and the sun didn't really shine all day, but there wasn't any rain either.
I was still a bit tired from the previous two day's running and I ran too soon after lunch, so didn't run as fast as I might have liked. I ran the same route as before, but added another small loop.
Run stats: Approx 73 mins, 10.13 miles - 7:12 minutes per mile

Sunday 24th Feb (scheduled for 145 minutes - long, slow run)
On Saturday Mike and Elaine joined us in the villa, Saturday had been a wash out, so we had spent a lot of the day indoors. When Sunday was shaping up to be a similar day, I was glad to get out in the morning for a long run. I had hoped to try a bit of cross country for my long run whilst in the Algarve and had picked up some leaflets with route maps for hikers and mountain bikers from the tourist information. The problem was that the routes were a bit short and coupled with the bad weather I decided to just do three of my normal laps.
I realised that this would be about twenty miles and I started really slowly, running the first lap well within myself. It was raining quite heavily during the first lap, but during the second lap after about eight or nine miles there was a major thunderstorm right over me and the rain came flooding down. If someone had squirted me with a hosepipe for ten minutes I could not have been wetter. One bolt of lightning hit the ground close to me - it was quite scary - and the roads were flooding, I ran through stretches of water where the water was half-way up my shins. However I didn't stop running apart from to re-tie my laces. I returned to the villa bedraggled but pleased with the run.
Run stats: Approx 158 mins, 21 miles - 7:31 minutes per mile

Monday 25th Feb (scheduled for 25 minutes easy)
The sun was back out today, I was going to do my recovery run with Mike and Elaine today, as they are doing a 10km run in a few weeks. They ate and drank too much at lunch time and crashed out in the afternoon, so I jogged round the small loop on my own.
Run stats: Approx 25 mins, 3.23 miles - 7:44 minutes per mile