Indecent Picture Ahead

Friday was obviously an easy run, that was never in question after Thursday's evaluation. It was Saturday's run that had me wondering what I should do. In the past few weeks I have always had 2 easy days between workouts, with the weekend's back-to-back runs counting as one workout, which makes the recovery during the week all the more important. I'm not a spring chicken any more and old bodies are healing slower than young ones. But eventually I decided to do my usual faster Saturday run because the early part of the weeks had seen 2 easy and one off day, so I figured I'd probably get away with it.

I was pretty pleased with that run. The last time I had run that loop was 2 weeks ago. Back then I had been a tad faster but had pushed too hard. This time I was much more relaxed and always in full control of the effort, so I call this the better workout even if the pace was a couple of seconds slower.

Stop complaining, I did warn you!  That's what it looked
like after I washed off the blood.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast for Sunday turned out to be correct and the gale force wind threw the rain against our window in a rather unwelcome fashion. I did wait a little bit until 9:30 in the hope of catching a quieter window and the rain subsiding, but that did not happen and it was pretty brutal up there in the hills. I call this a character-building run. The rain was relentless, the wind pretty bad, the roads were completely waterlogged with one particular area near Blackstones Bridge several inches submerged and of course I was utterly drenched. It did not help that I noticed some chafing happening as early as 5 miles in and obviously that only got worse, though I was still shocked to see the damage afterwards, there was actually blood running down my thigh! And boy, did that start to sting once the endorphins started to wear off.

The run itself was definitely on the slow side, but in these conditions I don't need an excuse. I finished the week on 70 miles despite missing a run on Monday, so I'm happy enough. That chafed area will cause troubles for a good while; ah well. Time to HTFU I suppose.

10 Jan

10 miles, 1:20:40, 8:40 pace, HR 139

12 Jan

10 miles, 1:11:55, 7:11 pace, HR 155
   incl 8 miles @ 6:58 (HR 157)

10 Jan

18+ miles, 2:26:04, 8:01 pace, HR 145

Weekly Mileage: 70