Out the door just after 5am, I was delighted to see it was a nice day for running. Very still, crisp and dry. Perfect!
Hands up all those who thought I was talking cooking oil there?
Ahem!
As this was officially only W8, R2 I'd decided before I hit the sack not to try and repeat the 5k run I did last day out, thinking it a bit much to expect from myself as I could do without the pressure and anyway, it'd be nice to keep the next one for my graduation run. With that in mind I selected the Week 9 podcast as I've been doing at least 30 minutes since Week 7 anyway and this is just notching up the required number of runs.
An added bonus was avoiding You And Julie on pod 8. Or so I thought. Why did none of you tell me it's the warm up walk for Week 9?
Grrrr......
Anyway off I set into the dark, the limited light picking up the beach huts which line the front and which I'm told go for over £10,000. I can't see the attraction myself but each to their own. I've run by them so many times I'm unsure why today was the day I chose to ruminate on the sanity of said folk but there you go, as far as I'm concerned the more my mind wanders when I'm out, the better.
On and on and on and before I know it, ten minutes has come and gone and I'm fast approaching the halfway split, by which time I'm again further along than I expected to be and decided that if Laura intercedes before the Lagoon, I'd stick with my plan and turn back, however if I got there first, I'd continue to Millionaires Row and give myself a chance of a successive 5k.
As I was considering it, I came upon a sleeping policeman I'd not seen before, in fact a pair of sleeping policemen. Except these weren't traffic calming measures, they were literally sleeping policemen, their brightly coloured patrol car sequestered in the dark with no stir from within. I could all but see the zeds slipping out of the window, ZZZzzzzzzzz.......
Now Laura may say I cheated and she said "15 minutes" before the water but I'd say it was borderline, after all, I can hardly be expected to hear her clearly over the snoring coppers, so to Mills Row I went.
Have to say, it was a wee bit further on than I remembered and while I may have started to regret it when I did eventually reach the point where I turn for home, I've done enough of this now to know there's no way I'll allow myself to stop once I commit to it.
On the way back by the cop car, I noticed one was either bringing to bear his investigative powers on a furtive looking dumper bin by the side of one of the huts, or he'd woken and was performing his post nap morning ablutions. Surely illegal, someone should call the poli....oh!
The last ten minutes was tough, by now I was in the warm down music and Laura was babbling on, although I barely registered a word as for some reason I thought I was close to my first 5k time and actually picked up the pace. Sadly I was wrong and my time was actually 37.19, although the app is telling me I ran slightly further and the pace was 1 second faster. Go figure!
Rather strangely, my body reacted completely differently to the last time. I'd had no reaction whatsoever the other day (in fact, other than the very first day of the programme, I never have) but this time, although I'd felt nothing while actually running, within seconds both my feet were really sore and my left calf started to stiffen.
I've never felt the need for stretches before and so hadn't a definite idea of how to do them but I remembered someone saying they only did stretches if required so I improvised something which seemed to do the trick, fifteen seconds on both legs.
The feet were a different matter, oddly, the left one eased off within about ten minutes but the right had me limping and is still quite sore, almost seven hours later. I accept I was asking for it, I'd fell for the classic newbies mistake of asking too much. However it was exactly the same pain in both feet so because one feels fine now I'm hoping I've done nothing serious and I'll be grand for Thursday morning.
There will DEFINITELY be no 5k then, I intend to learn my lesson and stick to 30 minutes until W9, R3.
I think.
And the best thing about today? The negativity that had me questioning whether I really wanted to keep up this running lark on my last two runs didn't even enter my head.
Another 5k done😆
5k - not quite what I expected!
First 5k race on Saturday
Week 5, Run 3 Completed!!! But Laura let me down big time!
5k....5k......5k!
