Round and round, up and down, through the streets of your town.

I tend to lie in bed planning my running route for the next day. Well, it whiles away the time. Luckily for me, I live a hop, skip and a jump away from the very splendid Old Railway Line, which is quiet(ish), leafy, flat, traffic-free and goes on for miles, so you don't run out of it in a hurry. All my early runs (run-walks, to begin with) were done along here, as I wasn't brave enough to venture into the big bad world of pavements and roads and cars and scary stuff like that. It was also quite satisfying to measure my progress by how far I could get along the route, discovering exciting new things like trees and bridges and benches I had never seen before.



Incredibly, this did eventually start to get ever so slightly boring, splendid and convenient though the old railway line continues to be (and with definite possibilities for traffic-free longer runs), and with trepidation I began to venture out of the comfort zone. I was going to try to upload some routes on here, but given that they all begin and end at my house, it suddenly occurred to me that this might be a slightly stupid thing to do, although given the not-quite-accuracy of the Garmin in pinpointing location (cf. running through hedges and over tops of houses in last post) any crazed stalker, in the unlikely event of reading this blog and deciding on me as a target, would probably be staking out a house in the next street anyway.

All my non-railway line running so far has been on pavements in my local area, as stated, beginning and ending at my house. I'd love to try more off-road/trail running, but haven't yet worked out precisely where to go and how not to get lost in the process, although I know there are many excellent possibilities close at hand. A project for the summer, I think.

Anyway, fab 8-mile "long" run yesterday... fab for the second half, at least. It seems to take me a good 2-3 miles to get warmed up, and the first mile being uphill didn't help, taking me a disgraceful 12:27 - three minutes slower than my last mile! During the second mile, a streamlined female runner sped past me with casual ease, making me feel more of a plodder than ever. Once I got into my stride, however, I felt great and probably had a stupid grin on my face for much of the time - that's how much I was enjoying it.

Splits:

1 00:12:27 1.00
2 00:10:34 1.00
3 00:10:49 1.00
4 00:09:43 1.00
5 00:10:16 1.00
6 00:09:49 1.00
7 00:09:51 1.00
8 00:09:19 1.00
9 00:00:50 0.10

Total time: 01:23:42 Total distance: 8.10 Average pace: 10:19

I was totally confident I'd beaten my previous 8 mile time from a couple of weeks ago (I know, I know, it's not about speed, but...), however much to my chagrin I was out by about 20 seconds, thanks to the lousy first mile. Having said that, previous 8 miles was in pre-Forerunner 405 days (the Age of the Footpod), so I can't be confident of entirely comparing like with like. Better just to start afresh, I think. Already looking forward to next weekend's 9 miles.