Going to Healing was a spur of the moment decision on Friday. Once I got home, I went inside for a cup of coffee and Andy started packing the bikes. At 20h00 we were on our way towards Grimsby and shortly after 22h00 we were there.
Andy's dad was slightly surprised to see that we brought bikes along, but he didn't say much, just helped us unpack.
Saturday morning we took the bikes and explored the area around his parents house, before managing to get slightly lost and thus increasing the time we were away from home. Andy's mom wanted to go see Pride and Prejudice with me, and we had to be home before 13h00 in order to leave on time.
We got home after a rather long extra bit, but it was an absolutely lovely outing.
Then we thought that we'd go for our run this morning, but discovered that some clothing was left behind... it interfered with our plans ever so slightly. We left his parents' two hours early and made our way back to our house.
On arrival I don't think even 10 minutes was spent before we were out of the door and pounding the road. I felt really good and the pace didn't feel that fast as we made our way to the Lount footpath.
The previous time that we ran on this particular footpath, we lost the path and ended up in restricted area - we had to go through security to get OUT - leaving them to wonder how we ever got in.
This time we managed to find the missing path, but once on it, it became clear that we wouldn't stay on it for long. 100m after we got onto it, the grass became a little wobbly. A tractor must've been on there recently and the danger of our ankles getting twisted was too high, so we turned around and went back on the way we came. On my way out of this field of doom, a few nettles stung me - the burning has yet to leave my legs.
We ran towards the Cloud trail and it was at that stage that I realised we were going much faster than we normally do.
We normally run around 5'55"/km, but today we had the following splits :
1 km 5'41"
2 km 5'49"
3 km 5'49"
4 km 5'52"
5 km 5'17"
6 km 4'49" - 33'17" total!
It didn't feel that fast, but it was not what I expected. I expected to run at around 6'00"/km and after 6km I wanted to slow down and run the last 4 minutes slowly in order to cool down somewhat.
After 6km I started running slowly... REALLY slowly. Andy's hip was sore; I walked a bit with him, before jogging the remaining few minutes for a total of 6.76km.
I love surprises like that :)
On another note - my ankle feels absolutely fine. I think the 2 days rest definitely did it some good :)
eep! nettles!
great pace on the run! nice to see that it was really consistant, too, not all over the place. nice pick-up at the end, too.
good news about the ankle. don't stop splashing, though!