By rights I should have been lining up for the National Cross Country Championships at Nottingham today. I was entered, paid up, ready to run. Then a couple of weeks ago it not only transpired to me that I was covering the Bahrain F1 test that day, the time difference had changed making it nigh on impossible to be able to make it to the race. I vainly hoped for a sandstorm to postpone the testing; that didn’t happen and I was resigned to missing out on one of those special races which don’t happen within an hour’s drive of where you live very often.
As it was I got out to run at 4pm, an hour after the Men’s Senior race began and hopefully sometime after I would have completed the 12km course. I’d mapped out a local run which took in some roads I hadn’t been down before. Unfortunately I had issues trying to upload the course to my Garmin (I think they are mucking around with things ahead of a big revamp of the Connect site) so had to run the course from memory.
I made a pretty good fist of it, only taking one wrong turn. Legs were still quite stiff, I need to pay attention to the right calf which is sending occasional creeping aches down to the foot. I don’t fancy another dose of plantar fasciitis thank you very much… The main objective was to tackle a new hill on me, one that has a Strava segment in need of a new KOM. Job done, but only just, it was a bit of a toughie.
I screwed up a bit with the Garmin, forgetting to restart the watch and losing a third of a mile. When you are going for record mileage, every metre counts. Twenty or so is planned for tomorrow, the weather doesn’t sound too promising mind you, so who knows what may happen.