Recovery run

I set out this morning with the intention of easing off the tightness in my thighs following the combination of last night and Sunday's session with a little recovery run. The idea was to head out into the forest and do a loop of the old circuit we used to run every Sunday. It has turned a little cooler here lately, so I put a cap and a buff on together with a windstopper and I headed out.

I ran up towards the church to begin with, clocking the first kilometre in 4"40 which pleased me. I could feel the ache in my thigh re-awaken and I just continued on waiting for this to wear off. It took me the best part of a loop to get the ache to fade and since I was in no hurry and it wasn't such a bad day after all, I decided that I'd do a second loop just to manage a little distance.

It was at the end of this first loop that I saw another couple of runners in the forest training too. I looked and saw that the second runner was a woman, dressed in blue and running very fast. I coldn't help wondering which club they were with and what they were doing there. I crossed them again in the opposite direction 20 minutes later as they were at full tilt. I understood a little better then as the woman was Christelle Daunay, out for a training run with her running partner. Her style and stride just looked so easy that I tried to improve my own over the next 4 minutes before I was exhausted!

The first 10km I ran in 45'28 so an average of 4"33/km. I was picking up the pace now for this second loop and every kilometre was managed in under 4"20. I went through 20k in just over 1'28 and felt good with my running if only a little hungry. Glad to get back home as I was just beginning to run out of energy.

22.8 km all up in 1'39 or an average pace of 4"21 /km over the distance. Not a great recovery run with such a relatively long distance but a good feeling to have completed this nonetheless.