Avenue of Pain and a long run

I’ve had a busy week of running this week. The highlights were the Avenue of Pain, lunchtime runs, a long run and a parkrun.

On Monday, I made it out to another training session with Lordshill. We did the ‘Avenue of Pain’, a training session that Stu wrote back when we were coaching. It involves running up and down a lot of steep hills in Southampton.

The final hill of the set was very close to our house. If I didn’t have to go back to The Common for my car then it would have been tempting to just run home!

15 seconds of fame for Stu

When I got home on Monday evening, I watched a rerun of that evening’s South Today. It had a feature about Southampton parkrun. Stu and M appeared on screen for several seconds.

Lunchtime running

On Tuesday, I went for a lunchtime run with a work colleague, Paul. We decided to do something different instead of just running on the Common. However, I misjudged the distance, so we just ended up doing 4km, which felt tough.

On Wednesday, I felt exhausted, so I decided not to run with LRR in the evening.

On Thursday, I ran just short of 5km at a slow pace with some work colleagues. By the time I got back to the office, my Garmin told me that I needed 22 hours of recovery.

Friday long run

Yesterday, I met up with Pete and ran down to Riverside Park to meet up with Rachel who had agreed to run with us (whilst pushing her daughter in her buggy). Out route went via Rachel’s final destination at 12km and then Pete and I did another 5km to complete a 17km run. It wasn’t slow and it wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t as agonising as last week’s run.

Next week Rachel won’t be running and the following week she’ll be child-free, so we may go for a longer run in the New Forest – fingers crossed the weather is kind!

Southampton parkrun

Today I ran parkrun with M in her buggy. It is so difficult to pass people and my legs were feeling tired, so I had a fairly slow time. I looked at my heart-rate afterwards and was surprised by how low it was.

In the final couple of kilometres, I was joined by Sergio, Gladys and Luis (who was pushing Sergio and Gladys’ daughter in a buggy). They encouraged me to run faster, even though I couldn’t keep up with Gladys two weeks ago. In the final 100m, Sergio gave my buggy a bit of a push (whilst I was holding it!), so I had to run even harder to keep going – thanks for the motivation guys!

What next?

Tomorrow is a rest day – I definitely feel like I’ve earnt it. 38.27km, so not even a full marathon in a week, but it’s the most I’ve run in a long time!

I’m starting to feel more confident that I’ll be ready to complete Southampton Half Marathon and Brighton Run 2 Music.