I ran on my own today; M slipped on the stairs yesterday - bruised but recovering and already talking about returning to running in the coming days. We’d intended to run yesterday morning, but decided to delay due to the rain... and the promise of sunshine today. Thankfully, I ran at 8.30 when that forecast was accurate; by mid morning the rain had resumed control.
Being on my own I could get out earlier than usual. I headed to a park where we’ve only run once before, but took a different route there. My aim was to make the run 35 minutes, as my first deliberate step to bridge from our c.4k/30-minute consolidation runs to 5k. A half-hour run feels very comfortable now, even if we do often overdo the starting pace. We’re also feeling good about getting to 5k without much trouble; we’re just making that progression steady, and now working with the 10% guide. A few recent runs had inadvertently overshot the 30-minute mark by a couple of minutes, so 35 minutes was the next target.
To be honest, it felt really easy and right. I’d ended up having taken 3 ‘rest’ days (with classes in yoga, Pilates and breathing/meditation. Still, I’d not had a great night’s sleep, so anticipated it being more of a struggle. Instead, it was about as perfect a run as I could hope for. Loved it. I could have easily continued well beyond, but stuck to plan. Correction: I did allow myself to take my run through to the street orchard at the end of the mini-park.
I ran without any accompaniment. I’d asked Runkeeper to inform me of my pace at 5-minute intervals so I didn’t have to keep pulling out my phone. It wasn’t too extreme, but I set off a little faster than I wanted to, especially as I was adding distance. This quick audio-stat helped confirm my suspicion and I was able to pull back just a bit. Perhaps this helped preserve energies and made the run easier.
I spotted a pied wagtail, crows, magpies, parakeets, mallards, Pochards, tufted ducks, swans, Canada geese, coots, moorhens, pigeons, black-headed gulls. My favourite dabchicks were hiding - and I circuited the water a few times looking for them to no avail. I took a photo of the reeds in the light of the sun as it rose above a cloud on the horizon. Seconds before the same cumulus cloud had been outlined in gold. Beautiful.
While circling the ponds, I sang Ding Dong Merrily on High a few times (waiting for patches when no one else was about). I’m late off the blocks, but this means I’ve now done a couple of the festive-bingo tasks!! The long drawn out ‘Gloria’ is hard enough to sing when standing still, but it sure was a (fun) challenge while running! Maybe the resulting oxygen starvation gave me an appetite for more breath work? Anyway, I tried the longer nasal inhale to shorter oral exhale method, which I quite like. On the way home, I also played with breathing counts to get my breath-points to alternate with the left- or right-foot landing. Interesting. Feels odd at first (unsurprisingly). This coincided with my fastest km section.
36:19 run-time, 4.61 km, 7:53 average pace.
7:42, 7:47, 8:38, 7:28, (7:47) - The 3rd km coincides with ‘Gloria’, running-on-the-spot photo-opportunity and a long slow incline back to the park gate. (My starting pace in the first 5 minutes was 7:34.)
Happy running!
W2R2 on bridge to 10k - done
Best Run to Date
Struggling to slow my pace for longer workouts
