I'm away again, this time in Greece for a week or so. The weather is slightly cooler than the UK but it's wonderful to be here.
We decided to run this morning. I've brought a short sleeved running top and leggings with me, Mr OBK has shorts and a long sleeved top. Despite the sunshine it was decidedly chilly. I think we both thought we had the wrong gear but too bad.
The main challenge is that where we are staying is half way up an extremely steep hill, possibly a small mountain (yeah, I'm exaggerating but that's what it feels like when you go uphill). If we go straight up or down the gradient is around 1 in 10, but the side roads aren't as extreme.
We set off into a chilly headwind and almost immediately a gentle upward slope. Toxic 10s with a vengeance, but soon the road went downhill again and meandered gently up and down until the concrete surface ended and dirt and wildflowers took over. We carried on until we saw an earth mover at work and realised we couldn't go further so turned back. 1km done.
At the main downward sloping road we descended a short way to another 'lateral' road. This one again went slightly uphill then a steeper slope downwards. At the bottom of the road was a gully for water drainage, a rocky dry riverbed on either side with the 'road' concreted over. My guess is it would be a raging torrent and impassable if there was heavy rain. I wonder why they didn't put a pipe under the concrete or make a bridge for the rainfall to flow away without covering the road?
After this, a very steep uphill slope was ahead of us which didn't appeal at all so we cut through a deserted property onto another relatively flat road. This took us past some houses to the main road alongside the beach. By now we were over 2km into the run.
Carried on at the side of the road to a swimming spot which we visited a lot when were here before but it was too cold to consider a dip. To get home we continued a little further then turned to another road sloping steeply uphill which flattened out a bit after a hundred metres or so. The very steep road home is at the end of this street and as I got there my NRC told me I had done 3 km. I decided this was enough and walked the rest of the way. My husband ran it but then he's tough lol, it's bad enough walking it.
I felt I was working really hard but when I checked the stats on my Garmin I spent most of the time in zone 4. If I'm on the flat this would feel like a gentle pace. That nice Mr Garmin has knocked two years off my age according to VO2 so maybe I wasn't working as hard as I thought.
This morning's run made me very thankful I live in such a flat place 😂
Chatsworth 10k - my first official 10k :)
Do all recovery runs give 3 new PBs 🤣🤣
🎵 The hills are alive with the sound of running! 🏃
9th Aussie run, up hills
