On face value, much of today was a repeat performance of yesterday but with a crucial difference. It was another beautiful, sunny morning. A bit more blurry as it was an early start to get the miles in early doors. As yesterday, the woods were peaceful and quiet with plenty of wildlife around. The big difference today then? I was lapping it up unlike yesterday’s moody misery.
In fact, one reason that should have knocked my enthusiasm, more than the pre-6 alarm, was the fact my legs were feeling like lead when I set off. Not painful as such but, if they could, there would definitely have been an exaggerated eye roll in my direction. Still, in spite of this, I was particularly chipper. That kind of annoyingly over-cheerful, enthusiastic ‘good morning’ chipper. I had good cause too to be fair because it was a great place to run today:
Back to those heavy legs then which I was trying to conveniently ignore. I’d expected them to turn up on many of the previous runs. Usual tactic applied of just slow it down until they are happy. Excitingly, nothing more really came of it. After 9 or 10km, the legs loosened up and started playing ball with the rest of my body.
A good lesson to remember though here…have faith that the legs will read the script in the end. It might just need some coaxing. Whether it takes more than 30km for them to play ball by the end of the month remains to be seen!
Two more quick things to touch on. The first will likely require more eye rolling and judgement. Yep, it’s numbers-based again. Today was my 100th run of the year. Internal fanfare. Only when I looked afterwards did I realise how close I was to making it particularly special:
I’ll not dwell on how nice that would have been had I done today’s run 11 minutes quicker. Instead I’ll move on to the second point of note.
Ah yes, yet again not going through an entire post without mentioning snacks. I did prompt this with an abnormal level of excitement yesterday though. This is only because a Tesco Munch bar really does the job as far as mid-run snacks are concerned:
All in all then a much more positive note than yesterday with the lesson that I must have faith. Faith in the fact that a totally flat run is often followed by a great run plus heavy legs often come round. That last one is said more in hope to be honest. They may have different ideas come the end of the month.
I’ll leave you with this morning’s sky which I enjoyed. An unusually artful way to end rather than tailing off in a barrage of waffle:
On to tomorrow, 20km and likely to be the first split run. Probably 2 x 10kms. I’m well aware I’ve threatened this in the past and let you down. I’m more confident of sticking to this plan tomorrow though.
Thanks for checking in and reading this far. Usual reminder of why I’m doing this:
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/tomfanthorpe2
longruntom 