This week has been a lot about resting my legs and doing my glute strength exercises since my great 8 mile on Sunday. I did another circuit/kettle bell type of class on Wednesday and even did 20 fast mins on the treadmill as my warm up - the idea of the short run was to keep my legs in the game without fatiguing them. And I fared much better, thank goodness, with the class this week - no where near as much stiffness or pain the next day!
All good. Until today's long run - we said 9-10. We did 9.5miles. But my god I think I hated running 8.9 of those miles ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
Foolishly we decided to try a new route and we seemed to pick the hilliest roads in town. I kid you not that the first 4.5 miles was mostly uphill. And they were some seriously big never ending and in parts very steep hills. It was miserable. The hills triggered off my hip/thigh pain. I felt like I was running through treacle. I could not get my breath, no matter how much I slowed down, I felt panicky as I couldn't slow my breathing, I even felt a bit sick at one point. Could not run.
Perked up slightly after a gel and a lovely flat downhill section until about mile 6.5 when I really really had to talk myself into every step. Even during the "easier" 4.5-6.5, downhill section, I still just found it incredibly hard to keep going, even downhill, as my right leg muscles were twinging and tightening with every step and my legs felt heavy and my whole body felt drained.
I don't know how I kept going, we tried to chat, I kept losing my breathing. We tried saying lets just run slowly for ten minutes and see how we feel, and then setting new mini goals. It was a mind over matter run today. My mind was all out convincing my body that it wasn't going to die and just had to finish. I do not know how my mind triumphed because I was so close to giving up for so much of the run!
We even had an awful bit near the end where we just couldn't work out the best route home avoiding hills and yet still being long enough to get over 9 miles. Hilariously we ended up doubling back a couple of times and down then running up and down my road three times to get us to 9.5 miles in the end.
I still don't know where those inner reserves came from to keep going those last few metres. Sore sore sore tonight, but proud of course!
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