Well, that was an entirely comfortable and relatively easy run.
I’ll admit I struggled a little on Tuesday night, either because of the uneven footpaths or my calfs or the sole of my right foot. I mean, I still did it but I was huffing and puffing in places.
So I was extremely apprehensive going out. Could I manage it without the encouragement or pressure of running with a group?
But what a difference! Exact same run lengths (3×5 minutes) but I set off going so, so slowly – so slow, in fact, I almost felt embarrassed running past cars, imagining the drivers and their passengers looking at me wondering if I was even moving at all.
Yet, and here’s the thing, it turned out I was going considerably quicker than I did during the group run on Tuesday. How does that happen? 13 seconds quicker for the first kilometre, a whopping 22 seconds for the next one …. and so on.
I’ll say again, I thought I was going embarrassingly slow. Go figure.
And, better than that, my legs felt perfectly comfortable. No burn, no aches, no desire to stop, no mental battle to carry on. I even deliberately chose an uphill section to finish on and decided to try a little sprint up it, managing to get to the top without needing to evacuate my innards at the end!
Fair enough, it was a short run – only 18 minutes – but considering I’m notoriously bad at starting I have to declare myself very pleased with it.
So that’s September finished, I doubled my mileage from August without any ill effects. It seems I’ve finally settled back into a routine after a topsy-turvy summer.
HUFF, PUFF AND SHUFFLE 