I’ve had a cold most of the week and been feeling a bit sorry for myself. Nothing bad enough to stop me doing anything but just enough to make you feel a bit miserable when you do! I haven’t run since Saturday. Finally, this afternoon I felt ok enough to give it a go. I opened up NRC to see if any of the guided runs took my fancy and discovered that apparently I’d been running since Weds night and had covered the best part of 7km. Go me! I must be so fit I can even run in my sleep, although I’m not sure my pace was very impressive, After deleting the rogue run, I scrolled through the recovery runs on offer this week and none of them grabbed me. Instead, I thought I’d just stick a podcast on and go. How far? Somewhere between two and five milesish.
I’m not going to lie, this was a grumbly one. It just seemed to be full of niggles and struggles. Nothing to worry about. Just those random aches and pains and annoyances that are there for a few minutes and pass. I couldn’t get my laces right. They were too loose. Then one was too tight. Then too loose again. Finally after a couple of miles I forgot about my feet. That was until my right big toe was a bit sore. That lasted until my left shin felt weird. Which carried on until my right hip flexors started to complain. And then my left glute took over. My right quad got in on the action for a couple of minutes. It was so strange, almost as if random parts of my body just wanted to have a little moan to remind me they still existed and then stop again. Luckily by three miles, everything seemed to have settled down and I felt ok.
The next issue I hit was unexpected traffic. The usually lovely and quiet county lane I’d reached was full of cars following their sat nav’s down a totally unsuitable diversion to avoid roadworks on the main road. That mean loads of stopping and starting, and jumping into hedges as drivers who don’t know how to drive safely in the lanes kept coming round blind corners way too fast. Not exactly relaxing! By the tine I hit the village, with bluebells still blooming, I was pretty tired from the mental energy of not getting run over. I was on about 4.5 miles and decided I’d round up to 5. As I was flogging myself on laps round the high street, I just thought to myself “why are you doing this? Does it really matter if your watch says 4.78 miles?”. I dropped to a walk and ended the run. That felt really hard and was a proper challenge to whether I was in control of my run or my run was controlling me. So I’m embracing the randomness of my distance.
If I’d had Coach B with me, I’m sure he’d have told me to measure success in as many ways as possible. I’m really pleased that this sort of run is back to being just a pretty normal run rather than feeling like a long run. Stopping when I felt like it was a win. It was a decent run which was quicker than it felt. Always a bonus. I managed not to get flattened by traffic. Maybe that’s the most unexpected success of all!
Happy running Team Bridge!
x
Round and round and round..... to 7K!!
New trainers and Duracell legs today but wish I could work our distances 😀
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