Sunday, May 6, 2007

The hard slog begins.......

Having eased myself back into my running schedule this week I knew I had to do a longish run this morning so it was early to bed and up at 5am this morning. Fed all the animals (except my hubby, who was, sensibly, still asleep!), had a cup of coffee and headed out of the door by 6am. I still had some 'thank you' cards to deliver in the village so I devised a route that allowed me to do them first and then headed off across country. I need to do several long runs across country to prepare for my next marathon in June which goes across the South Downs.

The weather has been so hot over recent weeks that the bitingly cold wind was rather a shock and I felt quite cold for a while. Scrambling over stiles soon warmed me up! The hardest part was negotiating the ruts in the ground (the soil is a very heavy clay here and is hard as concrete) and trying not to trip over any more tree roots - I tripped over one in the woods during the week, went flat on my face and now have a beautiful back and blue arm! I heard several cuckoos calling and realised that I haven't heard anything like as many this year. There were lots of young squirrels about too, with lovely fluffy tails. At one point I disturbed a herd of deer. I love living here!

I ran for 4 hours and did about 18 miles or thereabouts which will do. Next weekend I will be doing back-to-back long runs - 15 miles on Saturday and then 20 miles on Sunday as I have to start building my mileage up for the Kent 50 Mile Challenge in July.

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