Thursday, February 12, 2009

Brrr!

It was baltic stepping out the door at lunchtime, its not often its that cold but it was today. I was shivering all the way to the gate and the firt 5 minutes or so of running I was still shivering. It doesn't make for a smooth stride.

I wasn't sure how things were going to go so I planned to take a "run as I feel" run today, head down to the beach and run along the sand. I got to the beach and the bliddy tide was in, properly in so that scuppered that one.

I ran along the prom, into the wind (bit of an error in route choice there) and it was absolutely freezing and grey, everywhere. It did look to be brightening up over Winter Hill though. The cold air was really affecting my breathing.

I was running ok so I decided to continue down to the edge of Lytham then run back along Clifton Drive, that should give me about 7 miles. I don't know what happened when I got onto the section from Ansdell to Lytham, maybe the prom changes direction slightly. Whatever, it seemed to get even colder. It was then a trade off between running fast enough to stay warm but not so much that I was having to breathe cold air in hard. Not pleasant, I was getting a headache and earache from the cold even though I was wearing a buff.

A bloke was running in the opposite direction to me wearing shorts, his legs were bright lobster red and very cold looking, think he should invest in some tights.

The difference was noticeable as I turned onto Clifton Drive as it is more sheltered and the wind was behind me, I speeded up a little here as I wasn't fighting the wind.

A very chilly 7.02 miles at 8:50 average. Quite pleased actually, its the pace I'm supposed to be doing longer tempo style runs at anyway.

One of the advantages of the tide being in is that I saw lots of birds feeding at the waters edge, I don't know what they were (will find out) but they were quite nodescript until they were flying then they had impressive white markings on the wings.

2 comments:

  1. Running along the beach /prom sounds great. It's something I now really want to do.

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  2. Its about the only thing running in St Annes has got going for it. Its bracing at times, but the fresh air and sense of wide open space is great.

    Bit of a biddy/kiddy slalom in the warmer months but I tend to run more in the evenings then anyway.

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