After eight hours at work sitting on my butt I think my legs had seized up. I did go for a deliberate 500 step walk up and down the road in the afternoon to try and stave off the piles developing and my shins and calves felt really tight. Despite this, and despite feeling knackered and a bit headachy, I pulled on the calf sleeves and shoes and left the house.
I had been looking at Ju-Ju’s Magic 10 earlier and my runaway train of a brain was telling me that the run two days would count as the 15m/2.5k so why not do a 30m/5k today..? I told it that after a month off that sounded like foolishness to me and we had better get back into a routine where 30m/5k felt comfortable again before extending the times/distances. And I was also dithering with the idea of running at my ‘easy pace’, but couldn’t quite remember what that was. So you could say I was a bit divided/confused!
My lack of fitness soon sorted the decision-making out and I turned into a field toward a shorter route. The grass was longer than is comfortable to a struggling runner and I was breathing hard as I came upon a herd of young cows. They were wide-eyed and jumpy and started bucking and galloping about, blocking the path. There wasn’t anywhere to go so I put on the accelerator and bounded over knee-high grass to the safety of the gate.
I had to spend a minute or so recuperating from the effort and calming down (funny, didn’t forget to pause the Garmin!). Then homeward across more fields, thankfully without such long grass, although the ground was pretty spongy in the cut hay fields. I took a bit longer to get through the gates than is strictly required (and pause the Garmin whilst doing so), a sure sign of tiredness.
Well, I managed to go 4k with some nice negative splits across quite challenging terrain without being trampled, so it’s a positive. But the pace was uncomfortable and unsustainable at the moment, particularly on that terrain. Someone here suggested finding somewhere flat to run, but it’s so nice just to run out the front door into this lovely countryside. More practice required!
On Cloudventure Peak mini review:
And we thought that was the top of the hill 
NRC The Shifter 
