Joe's extra-curricular work activities have come to a close, so our weekly run returns to Wednesday evenings. Tonight (actually last night now) I wasn't sure what I should do. My schedule said it should be a hill session, but my leg muscles said otherwise - they didn't feel sufficiently recovered from Sunday. I definitely wanted to run, if only to try out my new shoes! I settled on the same undulating route I ran last Wednesday, about 4½ miles.
I set off conscious that my legs felt heavy and almost immediately it seemed that my gait was changed. It may have been my imagination, triggered by the knowledge that my new shoes are much flatter than I usually go for, or it may simply have been down to tight, tired muscles. I even wondered if it could possibly have anything to do with the new compression socks I was wearing, also for the first time! There were too many variables to be sure, so I tried to put it out of my mind, but couldn't help feeling that I was striking more with the mid-foot rather than the heel. This is, after all, a hoped for effect of my shoe choice. Hopefully it will help to improve my posture and running style and reduce the risk of injury. Who knows, perhaps even make me faster!
Despite the tired legs I kept up a decent pace, half convinced that the lighter, flatter shoes made me feel lighter on my feet!
At about 2¼ miles my head was so full of thoughts of shoes, gait, mid- and fore-foot striking, posture, pronation and so on, I forgot to turn left! Rather than turn back, which would only have added a couple of hundred yards, I decided to take the next turn, which I knew would bring me back on course in less than a quarter of a mile but shorten the run by about twice that.
So in the end I ran 4.05 miles in 29:35, that's 7:18 pace, or somewhere in between what I'd planned to run in Sunday's half marathon and what I actually ran. Also substantially faster than I've previously run the unabridged version of this route.
Hopefully I'll get some good miles in during the week, and on Saturday I'll probably run at Cannon Hill parkrun again. If I don't run I'll volunteer, and perhaps run there and back. My pal Derek will be there marshaling, though Joe is away this weekend. Some of the regulars ran at Stratford on Sunday, some in the half and at least one in the full marathon, so it'll be good to compare notes.
I've just started reading Christopher McDougal's 'Born to Run'. I'm not sure it's the 'bible for the barefoot running community' that Ben Fogle describes it as, but it's certainly entertaining, and hey - I'm only four chapters in.
The Hinckley results are still provisional...
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