The Saturday morning run is my favourite. The run through the forest to Cora lake and back is a 15km circuit and so just about qualifies as a long run. It's a perfect distance for half-marathon training and at the moment is the longest run in my week. Ideally, I'll try and fit in a long run on Sunday where I run between 1h30 - 1:50 and get up to 25 km but I lack the motivation and the time at the moment.
A cool morning today, very overcast and no sign of any sunshine. The temperature was around 16 - 17° C so ideal for running. I met up with Nick and we headed off into the forest. We always start off easily with the first 2km in 5:11 then 4:51 before we get into a steady pace of around 4:35. Today we were running at 4:30 and we both felt comfortable (or at least I did, but Nick didn't show any signs of straining or tiredness either and we were still chatting) and time just seemed to fly by. Before I knew it, we had already run around the lake and were heading back up the sandy tracks towards the Pavillon de la Muette, an old hunting lodge built for Louis XV.
This is the hardest part of the run as you feel that for every couple of strides forward that you slip back one. We managed to maintain the speed up the slope though as the Garmin indicated 4:40 for the km. I took the lead through the narrow tracks in the forest as it was my turn this week to "swallow the spiders", taking the early morning cobwebs out between the close branches either side of the track. The undergrowth is luxuriant at the moment with the rain and warm weather and I underestimated the size of the branches, taking a hit to the head as I went through.
We finished in style along the roads back to the house, as we picked up the pace once more to show each other how fit we are ! Ran the last 500m at 15km/h with a top speed of over 17km/h down the last road. Felt really great and back on form.
15km all up in 1:08. Great run, most enjoyable.
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