First 10 mile run in aaagggggesss, but I've learnt so much since I last ran one (at the start of lockdown) and it's really helped. I have no plan but I've steadily been ramping up the mileage for the past few weeks (which I suppose is a plan of sorts...). My Achilles issues are now manageable with the help of heel raises/drops, foot massages and spikey balls, and my right hip also seems to be behaving itself now I've lessened my weekly mileage and I'm doing regular quad stretches again.
Katnap and I now have a bunch of local routes that do not need us to go to 'the other side' of the river (where it's generally manically busy) so now we can bolt them together to do all sorts of different distances.
I have also discovered that, despite my disliking them during my earlier HM training, the Kendal Mint Cake chocolate & mint gels really work well immediately after a run. I have always had severe calf burn straight after a longer run but the last two weeks I have supped on one of these as soon as I've stopped and the burn just melts away, it's magic and making recovery so much easier.
So today's run was a combination of our Wednesday 10k route, a lump of the 14k run I did last week and a section of our (not) parkrun. We had a steady run, I can't say I felt brilliant as we'd already done two days of running so I wasn't particularly fresh but I knew I had to do it. Familiar routes helped and the thought of a lovely cup of lemon & ginger tea with a brownie at the end is a particularly good incentive now, even if we do have to go to 'the other side' to get it.
In the end, despite feeling a little creaky, it was my fastest 10 miles since my first back in March 2019 and I didn't have to walk around in circles for 10 minutes afterwards because my calves were on fire like I did back then, so I think that needs a big WOOHOOOO! ππππ
Happy running everybody π