Tuesday evening, Hannah and I had a meeting about our fund raising efforts and some more of the planning that we need to sort out. That meeting may have happened in the pub of course. I could tell then that it had been a while since I'd run, as even I had taken a few wistful looks over the hills on the way to the pub and thought that it would be a great evening for a run!
Thursday arrived, as it is want to do each week, and I was just about to head out for a run when Hannah decided she was also in the same frame of mind so we went out for a little jaunt together. As her knee is on the mend, it was only going to be a trial run to see how things went, rather than setting any records. We also realised it had been almost four weeks since either of us had been out for anything like a training run! Though we'd done the Wolf Run, that was nearly two weeks ago now.
The evening was a good one, with a nice warm day and a clear evening. Ideal for running really! It was so good, that I was back down to shorts and my Wolf Run t-shirt for running. I am still surprised that the medium shirt I ended up with fits me!! So off we went at a nice relaxed pace. Going off too fast is something I'm quite good at, so a slow start is of benefit. Hannah also lives on a hill now, so heading up it fast isn't wise to kick things off. By the time we'd made it to the end of the village, both of us were starting to puff a bit and asking the other if they were finding it hard going. Given the pace, it wasn't really hard going as we could still whinge about hard we were finding it. But it was certainly more effort than it should have been!
As the intention had been to see how things went, we'd aimed at doing roughly 5km. As there aren't many road loops out in the sticks, we went for an out and back route that would be at least that far. The way out was good going, but as we got near the turn around point, Hannah's knee went south on her. So south that it made her hip ache too! This was a bit of a problem, as it was the same distance back. So we took it slow for a bit to ease things along, as my ankle was also starting to feel a bit uncomfortable. It was a beautiful evening and the view was good!
Thankfully, the return leg was slightly downhill. This seemed to help Hannah keep going and it made my ankle feel good again. We'd managed to get the pace back on target again too, so it felt like we were making progress again. Turns out that Hannah is even more stubborn than me, as her knee was hurting still. As such, she headed straight back to home whilst I went for a little extension over the fields to get a change of surface. As I was feeling alright at this point, I decided to see about speeding up a bit too. Not too much, but I wanted to up the effort level a little bit for the last kilometre or so.
Soon after, I arrived back at the start and was feeling quite good about things! After a warm down and some stretches with a glass of water, I was just about ready for a pint. So it's a real shame that there's a pub all of 300 yds up the road. The only real fly in the ointment was that I had broken one of my usual rules: the pre-run poo. It might sound a tad distasteful, mainly because it is, but not going before a run makes life varying degrees of uncomfortable during and after the run. There are so many bits of running that are unavoidable, yet only known to those that run. Like picking the blisters off your feet. That one's obvious. Picking them off the ends of all of your toes though?! That one I didn't expect. But it gives you something to do of an evening!! Thankfully, this run was gentle enough to not cause my feet any issues.
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