Stitch in the mud

Apologies for the lack of a post last week. Various visiting and half term-ery got in the way of me doing a training run (although I did at least manage to fit in a cross-training session to make up for it a little) and I haven't really had much time for writing blogs recently.

As a result, I jumped at the opportunity to go for another run in the forest yesterday afternoon. Especially as Mark was around to come with me :-).

We planned to do the 3.5 K path again, as I've been a bit ill recently and didn't want to push myself too much. However, we ended up being foiled by all the mud everywhere (the 3.5K path takes a lot of detours along little dirt tracks through the trees). After one particularly slow and squelchy trek along one of these paths, we decided that we'd better just stick to the main track for the rest of the run.

And so, instead of a gentle, manageable, getting-back-into-the-swing-of-things 3.5K run, I ended up running for 5.2K instead.

It actually wasn't too bad: my legs were holding up pretty well and I wasn't getting too out of breath. The only real problem I experienced was almost continual stitches.

Now, I know why this is. Mark and I had friends to stay on Saturday night and we had a rather heavy (but totally lush) three-course meal. As I discovered to my cost, your body doesn't much like it when you start running after having eaten a huge amount of rich food (not that I'm complaining too much, you understand: sweet potato soup + roasted pheasant, dauphinois potatoes and veg + homemade apple tart and clotted cream = yum yum yum yum yum!). We also then compounded the problem by having bacon and eggs for breakfast the next morning (and no, having a smoothie with it doesn't automatically make it 'healthy'!). So it's no surprise, really, that my poor body was protesting rather a lot as I forced it to run along such a long (and hilly!) course.

Still, it was nice to get out under the (momentarily!) blue sky and hear the birds singing and suchlike :-).

I'm now looking forward to spring and blossoms and (hopefully!) an absence of mud...

Stats for this run:

Distance: 5.2K
Time: 44 minutes 57 seconds
Average K pace: 8 minutes 38 seconds