I REALLY WASN'T looking forward to doing my second and final longest run before race day.

Reason being.. my partner in crime had informed me the week before that she was going to be in Manchester to see Cirque De Soleil!! Well faced with another 20 miler or a nice weekend away, I suppose I couldn't blame her.

That meant however we were both going to have to tackle the 2nd Big Run on our ownsome.

Marianne did hers on the Thursday and sent me an excited text to say she had completed 21+ in very good time, so she was now ready to go up north and enjoy herself. Hmmm I however still had to accomplish mine.

Anyway I set about finding myself another partner and remembered Tom who had offered to run with me before so co-erced him into the run which to add injury to insult was going to be promptly starting at 7.30am on Sunday "yes" Sunday morning! Tom did however manage to negotiate an 8am start. Tom had his garmin GPS on and my rather cheaper Timex version was playing up for the first time ever I might add, so rather than faff about I said we would go by his and gave up trying to find a signal on mine. So off we set from Preston Park up London Rd, up St James Street, up to Ovingdean..... etc etc. I am beginning to feel like I am a map of central Brighton .

Anyway most of the marathon route give or take. Tom did not have an ipod (alarm bells ring!!) so we did a fair bit of chatting for the first 9 or 10 miles then by the time we hit Grand Ave Tom needed the boys room.

I found myself circling Hove Lawns like a lost pidgeon for what seemed like an age but was probably more like 15 mins. When he finally did emerge we headed off up Grand Ave towards Church Rd and on to St Leonards Rd near Portslade.

As we travelled up back on the the main Kingsway Road heading towards the Lagoon Tom decided he needed another stop off for a drink, he told me to go on ahead and he would catch me up... I at that stage was in no mind to stop anyhow so I carried on towards Carats. I had done the route to Carats and was well on my way back up Basin Road towards the seafront before I saw Tom again and he asked me what speed I had been going??

Not that fast to be honest!! Anyway it was up to me to finish the 8 miles on my own. Fine!! had my Hydro drink and my wine gums, and more importantly my music, what else could a girl ask for?

I was achy as hell but still going. Heading for Brighton Marina I got caught up in all of the Sainsbury's Sport Relief Mile runners which was surreal so cheekily ran on their bit of strip through my route to the Marina, not like anyone noticed. Now I was pretty tired and numb in most places but without the aid of Toms GPS I had to make sure I ran for the full four hours to make sure I had fullfilled my criteria of at least 22 miles. Once I had got to the Marina I turned back and headed for Brighton Pier which took me 2 mins over the four hours, but I needed a prime marker finish so that I could track my mileage on Google map.

I did it... 23.9 miles on average, I was very pleased. I celebrated with a big pot of tea at Costa in the Lanes, "I know very Rock n Roll" and then went home to a bath some pre packed melon slices a punnet of plums and a chocolate milk drink.

Ah bliss..... Now I know that I am as ready as I will ever be....

and thanks to my husband for making me the most appreciated Sunday Dinner ever my aching limbs were so grateful zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz x