Plans Change

Originally today’s plan was to be running the 26 miles Dunstable Downs Challenge, but things change. Training was going well, decent half marathon time at the Belvoir Half Marathon, pleased with my times on the London Cardiff 24 give the lack of sleep and ramping the mileage up nicely. Then I over extended myself  in Corfu, didn’t rest when I got back and you can guess the rest, injury time!

So instead I went for a nice gentle recovery run along the Trent as the sun started coming through

Not 26 miles, not hilly and just about offroad (well, a nice gravel path isn’t tarmac), instead a nice gentle 3.4 miles at 8:15 pace. No one else about apart from a couple of dog walkers and fishermen

So the perfect time to have a bit of a cogitate and contemplate as I ran along the river. Changing of plans is all good. So decided for the rest of the year to not push distance too much. Would like to get back up to a regular 10 miler a week, and then some shorter runs to make up to 25-30 miles per week.

Going to target some shorter/muddier challenges as well. So working on speed and strength. The first will mean early morning trips up to the Bramcote track for some intervals while it’s quiet before school, and it’s going to hurt. Need to keep an eye on the achilles and calves to stop the injury coming back.

Strength means hills and the gym. Hills I’m going to be careful of as that was my previous downfall (Corfu was pretty much one big hill where we were staying). Gym isn’t too much of a problem, though it’ll probably mean moving up to proper weights as I’ve pretty much run out of kettlebells, even doubling them up.

Testing all this, will mean actually going to Beeston Park Run at the bottom of my road, finding a local 10k and if I can find a sub 10k cross country race as well that’d be great. But if it all goes wrong, as long as I can have a nice quiet run along the river, all will be good. If I keep remembering that then it should stop me breaking myself again