Hurrah! I FINALLY enacted Jell’s advice... and everyone else’s, including my own and that of random YouTube running experts, and ran slower today!
The 7K run of Magic10 week 3 was nearly sabotaged by a wan and listless child, too tired to go to school after a night of disrupted sleep from pains in his legs. His father is a GP and swears blind there is no such thing as growing pains, but I beg to differ. This morning became taken up largely with polishing up my CV in between games of slither.io. It’s addictive.
By lunchtime he had perked up and needed some fresh air. On with the running togs then, and out we went into a blustery and bracing grey day. The boy was fully fitted out in thermal base layers, hat and gloves. I wasn’t much better, with a little merino hat under the visor (that is far too unflattering ever to be worn on it’s own), gloves and three top layers. What a fool. My sweat was stinging my eyeballs. Thankfully we were running in 3K laps past the house so I was able to lob hat, gloves, tops - everything at the door as we went past. I was so hot that I over-stripped and ended up in just leggings and a bra top, which shocked the sheep.
I digress. I set up the workout for the 7K at about a 7’30” pace, and managed to keep the brakes on pretty consistently. Plod plod plod. Honestly, I didn’t feel the need to stop at all. Not for fitness reasons, anyway - I did have to stop at 1K to adjust my son’s bike helmet, and there was a brief pause at 3K when I wrestled out of all my clothes, but I felt really good throughout the run. I noticed a bit of leg heaviness; I suspect this is normal but haven’t noticed it so much before because trying to breathe usually dominates my attention.
Honestly, it was the best run in a long long while, so pleasing. Maybe I can run 10K! Thanks Jell 🤗
The little guy in the photo is a Slow Loris, by the way. There is a terrific illustrated story by Alexis Deacon about a Slow Loris who lives in a zoo. It takes him all day to climb along a tree branch and two hours to eat an apple. But at night... slow Loris becomes fasssst. He hosts wild all-night parties with the other zoo animals. (That’s why they are always sleeping when the visitors come). I’ll reserve the wild party Loris for the next intervals session, I think. 😊
Chill out?
Slow run in the cold
5K Slow Run at the lakeside 👍🏃♀️😊
