With full blown coverage of the Australian GP starting early tomorrow morning, I’d little intention of running in the evening. Some impromptu middle of the night work from Melbourne meant a little longer than planned spent in bed, once I’d finally got back to sleep. All in all I must have had around six and a half hours of sleep, split into chunks. How would that treat the legs, which had run 24 miles on the Monday?
With the sun shining, I decided to go for an easy paced extended recovery run, making up for the lack of blue sky running on the Sunday. The first mile was the slowest, but straight away the legs felt better than at any point on yesterday’s run. The cough and cold is still in the system, but a lot less so than yesterday. After three miles or so I was easily bouncing along, feeling I could’ve gone plenty quicker should I wanted or needed to.
Through Harlaxton and up the appropriately named Swine Hill, it was probably the easiest I’d ever felt tackling this pretty steep climb, a feeling justified with a check on the Strava segments, which showed it to be my fastest ascent, and just a little way behind the newly crowned king of this mountain.
Once past the hill, the run pleasingly winds, mostly gently downhill, all the way back to Grantham, through Sproxton and towards Little Ponton. In spite of running into a headwind, the mile splits were comfortably under seven minutes. Into Grantham and along the river path back to home, the pace remained much the same and continued to feel very comfortable. The body was certainly enjoying the sunshine, although the left hip did start to grumble in the final couple of miles.
With night shifts awaiting, who knows how I’ll wing the rest of the week in terms of running. It will likely be a heavy dose of hazy minded easy paced running, with hopefully one quick session thrown in if I am lucky.