 Clearly having far too much fun! | Last year, when I went to cheer on a friend who was running the Salford 10k, organised by Salford Harriers at the Sports Village in Salford, I might reasonably have guessed I’d be running it myself this year but I’d have been mildly surprised to learn that I would also have joined the club! This being so, it was with a sense of slight guilt that I enjoyed participating in the event as a runner while so many familiar faces around me got stuck in to doing a fine job of organising, marshalling, dispensing race numbers and the like. There were a few other Harriers running too of course and it seems many of them did very well with a podium position for the gents and at least one new PB for the ladies. I managed a reasonably acceptable sub 45, which I didn’t think was too shoddy as a chunk of training as I approach my London Marathon taper. I treated it as a kind of tempo session, with a slightly slower 3 miles home (which turned in to 4 when I got a bit lost by the River Irwell!) tacked on the end to help make up the miles! It was a bit gloomy but nice and warm; I even took my gloves off, as you can see from the photo, gratefully, if presumptuously stolen from the Harriers' website! |
A rest day on Saturday then preceded a final Long Slow Run, the Sunday staple for many marathoners! Since the weather was so glorious, I experienced no temptation to hop on the treadmill and decided to head out on a route I last ran on Summer Solstice as part of the Longest Day Run virtual challenge. You can see details of the run that day along with a few piccies of the route if you check out the 21st of June 2014 blog post, but I’ll go so far as to share yesterday’s stats too, though I didn’t take any photos. I recalled that it was around 23 miles but I guessed it would be more like 22 as I’d got a bit lost trying to get on to the Mersey. Apparently not. 23.5 miles in the heels!
| I’m not going to pretend the last few miles weren’t hard but that was due to two very identifiable factors; A) I’d underestimated the temperature and ran out of fluids so was probably a bit dehydrated and B) that pesky old ITB started up a good effort at niggling from about mile 18, possibly exacerbated by aforementioned dehydration. There was a point, round about mile 20, where I was wondering if I should stop and walk, such was my ‘I’m getting injured!’ maranoia, however, upon deciding that probably wouldn’t really be any less painful and would just take a lot longer, I kept it up, just at a slightly slower pace. It wasn’t that sore… I was probably just being a wuss. I got through it anyway, my leg didn’t fall off and I still did the run on average 17 seconds faster per mile than I did in the summer, which was quite gratifying really as I thought my pace had got slower and my fitness had dropped since my training went out of the window due to illness over winter. |   |
Regardless of the run stats, I’ve always maintained that you’re only as good as your recovery and so I was a little concerned how I’d be feeling, especially in the knee area, the next day. Thankfully, my recovery package of delicious (!?) soya protein shakes, foam rolling, saunas, steam rooms and compression socks seems to have been at least mostly successful and whilst I’ll not pretend I haven’t got slightly heavy and achy legs today, and yes, I can feel it in the iliotibial band, I certainly don’t appear to have injured myself. Woo hoo! Let the taper commence!
