Monday 10 September 6.30pm. Cooler, breezy. 16°C
A different run today. I'm deliberately holding back and running so that my heart rate doesn't get above a certain point. The target is to keep it under 150bpm, which my watch classes as "Easy".
It's not easy to do that when you have hilly terrain.
Still in tee shirt and shorts, and there's a little chill in the air when I step outside. That's good, as I won't feel overheated when I'm warmed up.
The usual five minutes of warm up walk. My phone goes mad, announcing "Five minutes, five minutes, five minutes" repeatedly and then going through all the instructions from the watch over and over again. The watch is behaving normally so I reboot the phone and all is right again.
Just before the five minutes are up, I pass a guy who has been cutting the verge with a strimmer and is raking the clippings together.
Then the run begins. The watch complains that my heart rate is too low (under 135bpm) for about the first 250m. The road starts to slope upwards and my HR climbs into the target range.
I'm going slowly, much more slowly than I'd usually go. My stride length is shorter and my cadence is a little slower than usual (160 steps/min versus 180/min).
The road gently undulates down to a right angle turn, then climbs up slowly to a campsite. I receive a phone call of about 3½ minutes. I continue running through the call. It's a friend who needs some things fixing the next time I'm in the area.
After the campsite the lane is almost flat to a dip down to cross a river. Along this flatter stretch I see a young lady walking what seems from a distance to be a couple of small dogs. However, as I get closer I realise they're not dogs but little goats. They're following her happily. Not something you see every day!
My turnaround point is just before the road dips down, so on the return leg I take a photo of the goats without breaking my own stride.
My HR is now creeping up a bit and for the rest of the run it keeps going one side or the other of the 150bpm mark. The return leg has a bit more climbing than the outward one.
And then the two miles distance has been run and I drop to a walk.
The grass has been cleared from the verge in the twenty minutes since I first passed by.
At the end of the lane I break into a sprint for the 200m back to the start. My leg muscles were not expecting that and were tiring by the end of it.
Stats:
Duration: 32'35" total (23'04" running + 47" sprint)
Distance: 4.15 km (3.22 km running + 200m sprint)
Splits: 7'21", 6'59", 7'09", (last 220m) 7'19"/km + 200m @ 3'54"/km
Average pace for the main run: 7'10"/km
Now, I'd naturally run this at a pace around 5'45"/km, but being able to run slowly is as much a useful skill as to run faster. It's an essential skill to be able to find a more gentle pace if you want to run the longer distances.
And spotting some little goats out for a walk was a surprise bonus.
First longish run
First independent run 
I can't run 5K in 30 minutes, can I still Graduate ???
