I’ve had terrible trouble sleeping since this hot weather and I prefer to run in the mornings so after yesterday’s non starter ( poorly tummy) I thought early night and then set my alarm for 6.00am.
Awake just before the alarm ( happens EVERYTIME!!) and up I got. Put on my lovely new blue Race at Your Pace compression top and immediately felt more like running. 🤣 It was slightly chilly when I stepped outside but that lasted for all of 5 mins warmup walk. Still really nice running temperature though and BEST OF ALL ... no pedestrians and very few cars!!
Decided on my normal 5k route ( as I can go into Zombie mode and just concentrate on my stride and breathing. And off I went..... just running free and easy and I had promised myself not to check my watch too much. I put in Week9 Couch25k podcast but didn’t start it until I’d done my warmup walk, so started running at beg of warm up music. I thought I’d do this and run to end of cool down music too and then I’d know I’d run for 40 mins and should be about 5k by then.
Everything was going nicely and when Laura said you’ve done 5 mins now I thought well I’ve been running for 10 and sneaked a look at my pace and realised I was running a bit fast for me, so I slowed a bit so as not to run out of steam halfway round. I carried on plodding away and thought I’m just going to run and enjoy this one - Then I realised I was coming up to Chaddiford Lane, which is one of those slow inclines that goes on and on.......and on.... I slowed down so much here I was nearly power walking 😫
Oh well, deep breath, “you can do it girl, you’ve done it a couple of times before, you’re more than halfway round now “ and other encouraging phrases were going round my head as I puffed and wheezed my way to the end of the road and gratefully started to run down the slope round the corner. And then I was running towards the cut through which I’d had a PB on last time. I thought well I don’t think my I’m going all that fast today so I’ll see if I can break my time just for this bit.
So I dug deep and managed to lengthen my stride a bit and ran nicely through that bit - It’s about 0.3 miles so not too bad and then I came back out along the main road. At this point it’s usually straight up through, turn back towards the park and finish up the 5k there but as I didn’t think I was very fast I thought I’d go off a side street and do a loop and maybe go for distance and do 5.5k. So off I went and trotted round and then back and joined my normal route. At this point my watch pinged 3 miles and I automatically looked at it and realised the time was a lot less than I’d expected. So I decided to put my back into it and sprint the last 0.1 mile to see if I could do a decent time and lol and behold a new PB.!!!yay!!
Walking home as I cooled down I uploaded my run and as I got in the door my daughter texted me with “ 8 PRs on Strava Mum!!!”
Still can’t stop smiling. It was a lovely run , nice and cool, and if I hadn’t been so gobsmacked that I’d been that fast , when I’d felt slow, I’d have carried on running. Hey ho!! Next time maybe?
Early morning 5K to beat the heat 🏃🌞
Early run to beat the sun…🏃♀️☀️
Speedy 5k to beat the blues. 
What’s 2 extra km on a beautiful day like today? 🏃♀️🏃♀️
