Shorter, and therefore sweeter!

This week's run started a little earlier in the day, with the frivolities kicking off at 9.30 so all I'd had to prepare was a mug of coffee. We were back to doing the regular 4 mile cross country route with the two dogs. But this time we had the intention of getting a sub 50 minute time, as this was a target we'd set a while back.

Things started well, with me leading off at a brisk pace. I was trying to match Ant's previous pace in my head, but I had overcompensated a bit and we did the first 1.5 miles in 15 minutes! This also included the big killer hill that comes far too early into the run, which I was pleased to make it all the way to the top of for the first time.

Whilst we had set off at a fair pace, the sticky ground soon took it's toll. We managed to keep up a reasonable speed, but in places we were running across very soft fields and sinking. This doesn't make life easy, or quick. It does seem to bring out Ant's artistic side though, as today's photos are in black and white. It also helps when trying to take Iphone photos into the sun. This one was taken just after the stupidly soft ploughed field. This is also where my feet and legs were starting to feel heavy and my pace felt like it was dropping off a bit.

Thankfully, there's only two ploughed fields on this run, and the second is near the end and downhill. Prior to that though, there is another tricky hill. This I managed in one hit for the first time, and did so with the dogs whilst Ant stopped to get his camera out.

At this point Ant was telling me how close we were getting to the 50 minute target. Except he'd stopped mentioning the 50 minute part and was just saying target, which made me a little suspicious. I wasn't really sure what I should be suspicious of, but I was sort of hoping he'd decided that 50 minutes was too slow and had chosen a lower target. But as I had no way of knowing, I did my best to just keep plodding on.

Plodding on finally got me back to Ant's, via the horrible steep hill into the village and a little sprint finish to kill me. One big target is to be able to make it all the way up this hill in one go. I know one day I will be able to do it, but for now it is well beyond me!

So 46 minutes 58 seconds after leaving, I finished! So a much shorter time than anything so far. I was chuffed to bits when Ant told me the time as I had feared I had just missed the 50 minute mark. He was trying to push for sub 45 minutes the loon!! This is 7 minutes quicker than the last time I did this route, and my quickest by more than 3 minutes. One other thing to note from this week is that my lungs seem to be doing a much better job of keeping up, but my legs struggled today. I'll be upping my training to include a mid-week run in the near future so hopefully that will even things out a bit between the lungs and the legs.

Otherwise, yay for the time today. It feels like I did really well.

But now my legs hurt.