I know. I know. There is no such thing as a bad run. Any run is better than no run. Yadda, yadda, yadda. But on a crap-o-meter, this one was right up there close to the top of the crap-o-scale.
On Saturday I had a good, long run. Slightly faster than normal, so I was pretty worn out. Despite that I decided today that I could manage an interval tempo run in my lunch hour (bear with me, dear reader, the folly of my ways will soon become clear. Oh so soon). Slow for 1 km, fast for 1.5 km, rinse, repeat for a total of 3 iterations or 7.5 km all in all.
First km at a gentle speed went fine, no problems. After a few hundred meters my legs were feeling fine, and Saturday's hard run was a distant memory. Then came the first fast stretch. It felt like the 1.5 km was VERY long, but I managed to keep the speed up. Then a slow recovery km to get breathing back under control. Fine, no worries. But after that is where the troubles started.
The road I had intended to follow home (marked in green on the pic) was closed for roadworks. Although I've never been at this particular place, I had a sort of idea about how the roads might go (shown in yellow on the pic; spot the mistake!), so I continued on the alternative route. 500 meter into the fast run it got to be too much. I gave up. There was no will power. I just couldn't run fast any further, and I couldn't be bothered to even try. So I walked. Decided that there was no way I was going to be able to complete 3 x 1.5 km of fast running, but maybe a gentle jog back home would be okay. So off I go again, this time more gentle and not so fast. That lasted for a couple of km, and then I simply couldn't do any more.
Got my phone out to have a look at a map. Oh sh*t. I was roughly where the 5-marker is on the picture. Far to the south of where I thought I might be. And to make matters worse, the road continued in a south westerly direction, when I really wanted to go straight North at this stage.
I'll spare you the details of the rest of the "run". The speed and cadence graphs tell a very clear story about brave attempts at running a little bit, broken up by "f*ck it"-moments of walking.
Why does the red line end so abruptly far from where I started? I was now running (if you'll excuse the pun) completely on empty. My lunch hour had already turned into an hour and a half. I was eventually back on a road I knew, and I knew that with my current "speed" (ha!), it would take me at least another half an hour to get home. So I phoned my partner and asked her please, please to come and get me.
She did. She's a star like that. Although... I could have done without the "why would you go on such a long run on a work day, don't you ever work"-question. Yes, love, I do. But the roadworks, and my grasp of geography, and my poor knees which are now aching, and my back is as well, mwaaaaahhhhh!!! Just take me home, please.
So. Lessons.
1) Spend 5 minutes memorising the map before going out to run on roads you don't know.
2) When you're lost and far away from home, don't make things worse by taking an unknown road that ends up going completely in the wrong direction.
3) Don't go out on unknown roads in a lunch hour
4) I must listen to my body. This is the 3rd time in two months I've had to abort my hard Monday run following a hard Saturday run. It would have been soooo much smarter to just go on a gentle 5 km recovery run instead of trying to be brave.
5) Map, Tomas. Map. Check the map!
6) oh, and just in case I haven't mentioned: Listen to your body.
Poor you though, at least your OH was willing to come and get you. I would just like to point out that you ran quite a distance before starting to add the odd walk in ... so well done 
W9R1: Lessons l learnt today!!!
