It was Saturday afternoon when I started feeling restless, I'd gone for a gentle bike ride the night before for about 50 minutes on the flat but that afternoon I definitely wanted to do something more active than lying on the sofa watching the athletics and reading (congratulations to Mo Farah in the 10k by the way). It was 20 minutes later, having thought about all the exercise I could do and deciding on none of them, that I realised moving my weekend run to the Sunday was probably the cause as I hadn't got my usual fix that morning.
On the Sunday I was meeting up with the other runner's of Team Wedge in Southwater to go for our first group outing in months. I'd gone on one or two runs with Harry before Brighton last year, and one run with Harry, Weeman and Alan nearly a year ago but apart from that there hadn't been any Wedge outings. The plan here was to do 6 miles together. This was the first time since the end of May that I was going to run over 4 miles.
We were planning to all run together at somewhere between 10 and 10:30 min/mile. Once we'd all got to Lintott square in Southwater (Harry doing Alan's usual job of being late in his absence) we headed off down the Down's Link.
Perhaps unsurprisingly I started way too fast while acting as the early pace setter, and to be honest I never really felt settled. My recent recovery pace has been closer to the 9 minute mark, and although the conditions felt a little close, slowing it down by almost a minute a mile just felt wrong. The only point I didn't need to think about my pace was a section of about 2 miles around the turn where I took my speed from Tom. Unfortunately this otherwise smooth section was broken up by him managing to chip a tooth while drinking. The rest of the time my pace was all over the place, from 8:30s to 13 min/mile, but that's part of the challenge of running with others.
We did a nice six miles though, with some good chat along the way. This may have been the other reason that the pace didn't settle. The run felt well within my comfort zone, and the calf held up great. When I got home I had my first bath in ages. I don't have baths day to day, but after a long run on a weekend they feel great and I would swear by there ability to aid muscle soreness. I know a lot of people support ice baths, but that sounds incredibly unpleasant and I question how much it helps long term, so hot baths it is. I didn't take any Ibuprofen either, as I didn't feel there was any reason to.
Next week is a rest week, so I'm cutting a mile off all my runs. This coincides with a week at college, meaning Tuesday's run will be from Cambridge rather than Horsham, and a visit back to my old favourite route by the river.
Distance: 6.07 miles
Time: 1 hour 6 minutes 40 seconds
Pace: 10:58 min/mile
Heart rate: 162bpm
Map: Here
Also to note is that we've added a new sidebar to the blog with some favourite links. At the moment the only one in there is to DC Rainmaker's blog. I've read this for a couple of weeks, and it covers his exploits as a triathlete, while travelling all over the world for work. In particular the race reports are great, and it includes some of the most in depth gear reviews I've ever seen.
115 miles to go...
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