Saturday, February 7, 2009

Long Run - Ouch

The original plan for today was to go on a decent MTB ride over Hebden way. I put air in my forks, made arrangements.....We were out for a meal on Friday night and I drove because I was on call. It didn't dawn on me properly til 11:15 pm that being on call meant that heading off into the wilds of West Yorkshire was a complete no-no, I need to be able to log on to the systems within a maximum of an hour after being called - feck, I've not been on call for ages so I get out of the habit.

B*gger, phone calls made in the morning and apologies made. I decided to head out for a long run. Heading down to the bottom of Cuerden park was also out today so I basically ran along and near the Ribble so I could get back easily if called.

My legs felt tired to start but I wasn't too worried as I could take my time to get into it. I decided to run along the Ribble way (not the cycleway), which was a grassy path next to the river. Its fallen away in a few places and I decided that running really close to the edge was perhaps not sensible.

The Ribble was really low, lots of little beaches I hadn't seen last time I was along this way. I dropped down onto one and took a few pictures, then some more:



Which was nice but it was just over 3 miles in and I was already in faff mode. I head along a bit more looking at the view, a tractor came into the field and snapped my attention back just in time to stop me heading into some slurry. As the tractor went through it it disturbed it and the stench was minging. It was nicely added to by the fact the tractor was muck spreading, eww!

I joined up with the cycle path and headed back towards London Road. At just after 5 miles my legs decided to start hurting, this was going to be a hard run. It was my quads that were complaining, I can only think they were still sore after Thursdays effort.

I explored lots of little paths, ended up in the centre of Preston at one point, then various paths in Penwortham then back along the Ribble the way I came. It was an exercise in keeping going when all I wanted to do was stop, not particularly enjoyable but I kept telling myself this would be good preparation for the latter stages of the marathon. At the 14 mile point I really just wanted to walk but I made myself run, including turning away from home for a bit to make sure I covered 15 miles.

So just over 15 painful miles and surprisingly at 9.29 pace, same as last 15 miler. I put it down to the flatter run as it certainly felt slow. The jury is still out on the Wave Creation shoe, they are noticeably firmer than the Wave Rider and I'm not sure I entirely like them.

It is painful walking downstairs at the minute, last time my quads felt like that I was doing hills. I need to do some more hills to get some quad strength back. Think I could really have done with riding rather than running today. Easy day tomorrow now I think, pick up some shopping on the bike only.

1 comment:

  1. don't be disappointed. you're not slower and it sounds like you had a pretty hard week tempo wise.

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