A Comfortable 5 miles in the December Darkness – 53:17
Posted on Dec 10, 2011 under 5 miles, Long Runs, Milestones | No CommentHadn’t been running in the week due to general Christmas busyness and also a cold trying to start off and on ever since last week. Felt quite rough yesterday so just rested up, then on the back of some personal stressful stuff, decided a run might help with my mood, so set off in the cold December Saturday evening with a vague plan of seeing if I could do 5 miles.
Started off on local streets as usual and decided to head up Windmill Lane, through the edge of Dane Bank and around to Hyde Road for the long stretch back. Felt strangely comfortable, albeit running at a pretty slow steady pace, and only felt moderately strained going up the hill on Windmill Lane at about 3k. Felt pretty good thereafter, though I did notice a few hunger pangs along the way.
Still felt good on the long straight along Hyde Road back into Denton, saw a lady runner and gave her the thumbs up and she greeted me verbally which was nice. Slowed over the steep motorway bridge, then with a KM to go started to speed up. Flew past a gang of laughing youths and a glance at the Garmin showed my pace to be 3:41per KM at that point but it didn’t last, although I still felt good I slowed down a little and although the last k was the fastest it was still over 6 minutes. Still, even that last burst of speed didn’t leave me too much out of breath and I only stopped because I had reached my target and didn’t want to overdo the increase in distance and risk injury.
In all the steady increases and rest periods I have been building in seem to be working and my running is going strong at the moment – this was certainly the easiest 5 miler I can remember running this year, so will be interesting to see how I get on when I start trying to run a little faster, but for now just putting in the miles is feeling good. 🙂