In the meantime...

I did get to run my second overall 22 km in my life. This time it wasn't under race conditions though but a simple, weekend long run.
I felt tired going into the once alrady postponed event. For this distance I need to finish 3 laps around the lake where I usually run my long runs. I had to push through the better half of the first lap to even get under 5:30 km pace. But something surprising happened getting close to end of the lap which I though would be the last. I felt stronger by each step after the 5th km. So strong that the second lap felt very easy. Pace got better, up to 5:25 km pace. I wasn't hesitating for a bit to start the 3rd round.
As this was an increase in distance it was unavoidable to hit a wall. 18 km was the moment where all mental power had to get in to keep running. Of course it got better around 19 km and was able to maintain pace and attitude until the end.
It felt very good to see 20 km on my Polar as the digits turned. And I almost did it in two hours as well. It would have been nice to get under two but it felt very satisfying to finish at all.

Recovery was good as well. Muscles were sore for two days. Ran a recovery 4 km very easy, then ran my usual 800 m repeat two days later. It made me reborn! I was very concerned before as my legs still felt the affects of the long run. But to my biggest pleasure all went well. I was able run even the last repeat as I should not as expected. The next day, Friday went for the hill repeats just to see how it quickly I can recover. Great run again, with even better recovery.

So good that I even decided to push harder on Sunday when the next 22 km was scheduled. Kept an easy (at least felt like it) 5:15 pace all the way the first two laps. Of course this meant more struggle for the 3rd but it was totally worth it. I slowed down to 5:20 even to 5:30 from time to time by after few minutes of refreshing, pace got back to normal.

When I pressed stop at the end I could hardly belive that it "only" toom 1 hour 58 minutes to get it done. 5 minute improvement over last week's result both at the half marathon distance and over all as well.

Now I have a new target after the under hour 12 km: get my half marathon down to 1:45.

To achieve this: some speed work this week after a recovery run tomorrow. Long run over the weekend, 1.5 km speed repeats next week foloowed by two minute hill runs.

The future looks promising...