Day 48: Running under the influence

RUN: 1.6 miles

Well having to squeeze in supermarket shopping, cake-making and birthday partying today made my run a bit of a late affair.
After a couple of glasses of wine at Una's (Andy's mum) lovely birthday barbecue, I must admit running was not so appealing. But I did manage to go out for a respectable, if not ideal, 1.6 miles.

Here's my route - just up the main road and back, I'm afraid.

Day 47: Healing hands on my legs

RUN: 1.1 miles

After a very busy few days I've been a bit neglectful towards my legs.
No icing, no taping, just a couple of quick, short runs, having been veery short on time.
So my shins and calves must have been relieved when my friend - physiotherapist-in-training Amy Casey - got her hands on them.
She made suggestions on what I can do to ease the shin splints further and how I should be stretching and reassured me about the weird dints in my shin. She also massaged my muscles, working on a few knots in my calf. Hopefully I'll be able to get rid of the knots with some enthusiastic stretching and some more massaging.
Amy was impressed with the improvement in the dorsiflexion (I think that's right) in my left leg.
Here she is massaging my shins - Thank you, Amy!

It's surprising how getting to know how your body actually works changes the way you feel about it and makes you want to look after it a lot more.

Here's the info on my woefully short run for today

Day 45: Running and reading - chapter two

RUN: 2.0 miles

I ran just another couple of miles today, listening to more of my audio book.
The story is drawing me in now, so I'm rethinking my comments of yesterday. Listening to a story really does serve to take my mind off the running. I found today that the five-minute announcements from the MapMyRun lady seem to come surprisingly quickly when I'm lost in the story of Emma and Dexter and their strange non-love affair in One Day. So I just keep on going, and thoughts of tiredness don;t seem to enter my brain so easily.
Anyhow, a two-mile lap of High Royds tonight. Hundreds of rabbits were there, as well as hundreds of flies getting my mouth and eyes. Great.
Only another eight miles to go until I've done my first 100 - yey!
Here's my route etc for tonight.

Day 44: Running and reading (sort of)...

RUN: 2.1 miles

...Well more like being read to actually. For today's run I decided to experiment with my choice of audio motivation, rather than the usual iPod shuffle. I downloaded an audio book (One Day by David Nicholls) and put it on the iPod for my run.

I'm not convinced that running to books is the way to go, but I think I'll stick with it for the rest of this book. I've got another two hours 15 mins to go, so it will last me a good few runs.
On the positive side, it help to alleviate the boredom of running. It can't be denied that jogging is often a battle against the boredom rather than the body. So a book being read to you does give you something to focus on and takes the mind off any negative thoughts (ie I want to stop).
However, normally it's just me and the pavement and my thoughts, mind wandering, thinking things through, thinking of anything and everything. But if you let your mind wander while listening to a story, you obviously end up missing bits. Also, when the MapMyRun lady reads out my time and pace etc every five minutes through my headphones, my book gets faded down and I miss another bit of the story.

I'll let you know how the 'reading' goes, but tonight I just did a couple of miles. I'm trying to strike a balance between doing enough miles and not 'overdoing it'. So just 2.1 tonight - here's the map and info.

Day 43: A terrible case of Olympic fever

RUN: 4.0 miles

This evening I managed to tear myself away from the TV for long enough to do a four-mile run.
The Olympics is everywhere. I needn't have worried about missing anything because I could see all the action through every living room window I ran past along my route - everyone is watching. Britain is well and truly in the grip of Olympic fever.

I did two laps of my route into Guiseley and back. It wasn't even too difficult!
If someone had told me a few months ago that I would have been able to run four miles - non-stop, with relative ease (without every step beyond the first 100 metres being agony) - I would have found it hard to believe. But I can! Sometimes. So who knows what might be possible. Rio de Janeiro 2016 here I come!

Here's my two-lap route from this evening

Day 42: Dodging the downpours

RUN: 2.0 miles

My muscles and shins have been quite sore after yesterday's run. I expected my shins would possibly give me some grief, but my muscle aches have been a pain in the bum... literally. (It's the muscles on my bum, at the side, below my hips that hurt! Ow.)

The weather today was awful. There was torrential rain, thunder, lightning and even a tornado in Bradford according to Twitter. Check out this tweet and twitpic from @steduffy86!
Here's another video for you, this time of the rain today, taken from my window. I did NOT want to go out in this - I mustn't be as hardcore as the poor cyclist in the video.

Anyway, it carried on, on and off like this all day, but I managed to nip out for a quick few miles between the downpours. Here's my route and stats from today.

PS. Speaking of lightning, I've just watched Usain Bolt win the Olympic 100m at London 2012. Magic.