First Run

I am still very much in the dark as to how sore I should expect to be at this stage of the recovery. On Wednesday I went for a run/walk (mainly run) along the old railway and found myself chugging along at 8 min/mile pace, which at the time felt great, thinking I'm well on my way now, but later that night I was in quite a lot of pain and hobbling round the house. It feels a different kind of pain to the tendonitis trouble I've suffered with for a number of years, but I'm still not sure if this is what I should expect for the next month or so, or am I doing some damage. Each morning it feels OK, which is again, very different to tendonitis. I'm going to make an appointment to see the physio again next week, mainly for a chat rather than some physical physio.

On a positive note, I had my first full run for 8 months last night. Earlier in the week I fired an email round at work, inviting anyone who would like to join me for my first run. Most of the usual suspects responded, though I did get a few surprise responses along with comments like "this is my only chance to beat you". In the end, the weather was atrocious and only the hardy few toughed it out.


Pre-run photo

We did a nice steady 5.5 miles, working our way past the rugby club and theatre, down to the lake shore, along the shore through the woods, returning through the woods parallel to the Borrowdale Road and back to school. Everyone was chatting away, commenting on how much they were enjoying the get-together, suggesting we could make a regular thing of this - I hope so.

I felt OK as we were jogging along, but I made sure I kept my pace much slower than Wednesday's outing, generally keeping between 10 an 11 min/mile. Didn't feel too sore after and was just happy to get muddy and be with runners again.
 

Muddy again at last



It was lovely to have such support, but it was also simply one of those occasions where everyone enjoyed having some running company on a horrid night, rounding off the working week with a bit of banter. Who could ask for more?! I suppose there was only one way we could finish the whole occasion; this last photo is of the cool down. We are all stretching and having a few protein recovery drinks!


Cool down

There has been a bit of talk about "The Man Suit" and how you adapt to the toughness of the challenge. The general theory seems to be that when things start to get tough, you zip up your man suit and get on with it. If things get worse, you might also have to roll up the sleeves. I had an email from a friend in Spain (Hi, David) who suggested the next level of hardship would require spitting on your hands. Where do we go from here? In terms of a 100 mile race, the man suit might come into play at the 3-4 hour point which always seems a bad patch, the sleeves are rolled up at the 35 mile point when you realise you need a caffeine blast and you spit on you hands at the halfway point knowing you have to do it all again. How do we cope with the rest of the race?