Recovery running

I slept like a log last night... ten and a half hours of uninterrupted sleep! It was sheer bliss, although walking downstairs afterwards left me feeling very stiff. There wasn't very many soft tissues in my body that didn't ache and I had no idea how a recovery run would feel. I was almost dreading it! I had breakfast, which consisted of rice cakes with Marmite on them (there was nothing in the house and being a bank holiday meant grabbing whatever was available!) and I put my trail shoes on. I've only walked in the Hoka Stinson trail shoes, so I was going to use today as a test for how they felt to run in.

Graeme took the dog out at the same time. It was absolutely freezing and quite windy, so the first 3 minutes were spent trying to warm up. I was pleasantly surprised to feel quite comfortable and wasn't the bag of aches I expected to be. I chose a route that I hope to run with Kerry when she comes up, so I took notice of the terrain, the mild undulations and the openess on the beach banks... because of the wind, today it was tough to run against it. After about 2 miles I saw Graeme and Lincoln walking the opposite way. (Lincoln desperately trying to get to me whilst being held on the lead).

All in all, I ran/walked 5 miles in an hour on a 3:3 basis. Now that I know a recovery run won't kill me after a big weekend on my feet, I will start increasing the running sections until hopefully (EVENTUALLY!!!) I will be able to run the whole hour without needing to walk. Small steps though... it could take me half the year to get up to that point without re-injuring myself!

On the injury prevention subject, I am rollering all the injury prone areas, doing eccentric calf raises on the stairs, stretching my toes and ankle area to stop pain occurring due to the extra walking I need to do... in fact, I'm doing everything that I can think of to stop any problems arising. I've never done that before, I've always waited until I've got an issue before doing anything about it. Prevention is definetely better than cure, and with only 7 weeks to go, I don't have time to wait for cures!