Blimey, that was hard. Dead hard. But....I did it. RUN #2 of My Asics Half Marathon Plan is DONE! But the wind.......oh my God, those gale force winds, blowing me backwards and trying to destroy my mental efforts.
The idea of this "build up run" was to start slow, then go a bit faster, then a bit faster again over 8K, but maintaining your speed each time you step on the gas. As FrockyHorror (great handle that!) explained to me on a previous post, this is extremely hard to do. You can see by my times that I only really cracked it on K's 5,6 & 7. But that bloody gale in my face stopped me from romping home in a glorious final K! Never mind, I'm glad to have done it. Also, it's nice to have a "PLAN" to follow as it gives you a little bit of structure to your running life.
I was well rested this morning, having slept well and my body had been fuelled the night before with a gigantic bowl of rigatoni and vegetables (that I made - to give Mrs Dan a rest from cooking.) I opened my birthday cards, mulled over how being 52 was going to affect my run then instantly banished all negative thoughts from my head. Popped on the lycra and drank a glass of sludge from the juicer (various vegetables and ginger root) before telling Mrs Dan that I was off. It was sunny and gorgeous (but windy) so I put a pair of shades on and was glad I did as some portions of my route was in blazingly bright sunlight.
There were no interesting things to report on the run. The only weird thing was how low the Thames was at Richmond Lock. It was SO LOW, there was even a sort of shingly beach on show which I've never seen before. Normally you never see the stony river bed, so that was interesting. Lots of ducks quacking today and even some noisy geese too. But sadly, no strange humans making any odd noises!
My legs and general demeanour was good despite a tiny twinge'ette in my right groin. I tried to remember to shorten my stride and widen my gait a bit and this helped. Breathing was great and didn't get noisy until around 6K when I was stepping on the gas, but I took in huge gulps of oxygen and imagined it flooding my blood with energetic molecules, to keep me going.
Because of the effort I put in today I felt slightly nauseous when I got home, but this soon passed after a glass of water. I think I should have taken some water with me on the run and will do in the future I think. However I DID manage to remember tissue to blow my nose into! HOORAY!
Right, off to buy groceries with Mrs Dan now then later, it's up to Covent Garden for a birthday din dins with Mrs Dan in a fancy restaurant! Yeeeahhhh!!
Thanks for reading. Keep running and smiling.
Yer pal
Dan.
