Sunday 17 July 2011

Surviving a Sunday run on the seafront

I checked the weather report last night before bed, and it said dry in the morning, rain at 1000, then dry at 1300. Since I'm not a morning person I thought fine, I'll sleep in, have breakfast and do my 10 miles at 1300. Of course, by the time I finished breakfast it still hadn't rained and the report had changed to thunderstorms from 1300 until 1900! By then I was fed up with the Met Office and decided to head out, rain or not.

Conditions on the seafront have been really variable this past month, and today the gusty winds were back! Great going east with the wind in your back, but running into the wind going the other direction was miserable. :( Was headed home for the final two miles but barely moving...so I decided to turn around and run the other direction even though it meant a long walk home! Can you tell which direction I'm running based on my splits?


Still didn't get the pace I wanted (10:00/mi) but figure I got an extra workout running into the wind--and at least the rain held off. And this Sunday's run felt much better than last week, when I just couldn't take another step by the end!

Running on the seafront in Brighton is always a bit tricky later in the day, especially with all the tourists around this time of year. I try to navigate around people as best as I can, looking ahead for gaps and I usually don't have too many problems. But today was a close call...guy was standing, looking right in my direction and there's plenty of room for me to run to the right side of him. I was sure that he saw me, but right when I was passing him he decided to point at something in the sea and almost clotheslined me! Luckily I saw his arm come up and ran into it without too much drama. We both apologized and I happily got away unscathed! I guess sometimes being a slow runner is a good thing!

Overall it's been a good week...didn't hit my pace target for the long run but my mileage is creeping up. Anything beyond 22 miles/week is new territory for me so I'm happy about that. Week 7 recap:


Week 8 here I come! I have my first 13 mile training run planned!

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