Its all in the title really, what a horrible week to have to motivate yourself to get outside and go for a run, but run I did.

Tuesday was a test run for the new trainers, two laps around Lloyd park and the ground was just a bog from start to finish. Pacing wise, it was fairly slow and I am not sure if this is the terrain, a sign of too much training or the change from Km to Miles on my Garmin (more on this later)

Wednesday a shorter road run at just over 4.5 miles, Thursday was a 5 miler. Again pace wise these runs were slower than past runs and being on the road for each of them the weather conditions would have been less likely to have an impact.

Saturdays run was a route planned by Gareth, with the promise of it having lots of hills and being a bit muddy. Getting to Reigate hill for 07:30 the rain had already started to come down, and continued to do so for the two and a half hours we were out there. The route profile shows the amount of up and down that we had to work through:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What the profile can’t convey is the mud. I have done a few adventure runs such as the Grim or the The Major, all pegged as muddy and tough courses. Saturdays run was up there with those in terms of mud, barring the waist deep mud pools of the Grim I would say that overall it was worse!

This whole pace thing is starting concern me somewhat, I was expecting for my shorter runs to get faster not the other way around. I am not certain what the cause is, when I have been starting off on a run my legs are feeling heavy and sore and its taking a while to ease into the run and increase any sort of pace. I haven’t been stretching as much as I should do following a run and on my rest days and this is something I have started to really concentrate on now.

I have also purchased a new book (thanks Rory for the tip) which I am going to read through. When I bought it I thought it was just your normal run of the mill running book which I could read and perhaps take some tips from, however what I got was a lot more.

This book is EVERYTHING, 921 pages of the science of running, nutrition, training plans, excercises, technical info on shoes, the bodies muscle make-up and more! Its going to be some reading, but I won’t need to buy another running magazine because I am guessing that the information contained in the book is the origin for a lot of the training plans or nutrition advice you see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I plan to post some of the things I read in this book and give my own take on them, seeing how I improve, what works and what doesn’t however if you want to read the whole thing, its sale on Amazon for £15.00: Lore of Running, by Tim Noakes MD

Total Distance: 31.95 Miles,  Average Pace: 10:17/mi, Total Time: 05:28:44