Christmas Run
I decided to head out for a little run on Christmas day. I say little, but it actually felt quite long and tough.
Strava tells me that it was a harder-than-usual effort, and it's dead right... For a 10km run, I felt a lot less in control than usual. By the end of it, I was really fatigued. I felt my knees were tired, not sore but strained. It is that classic feeling of having to be put through something that you're not used to. Thats really the definition of strain. Its a lack of training, basically.
I've been on somewhat of a break of late, ever since travelling Europe. I don't mind terribly. It's sort of a self-induced, as-you-go decision. I used to get annoyed with myself if I didn't keep to the vision I had in my head. But I'm not annoyed because my current vision is exactly that, a more relaxed, casual approach to progression than I'd had previously. For instance, I run fairly regularly down to the gym - and that's it. No more weekend long runs for instance.
In fact, I've rarely ever had a plan for my running. I tend to just do what I tell myself to do. If I look back, my 'plan' transpires generally as a pursuit of continual progression of some sort. So that might mean I tend to want to run consistently, instead of aiming to run consistently. If I aim, perhaps that's a plan. I don't know - the distinction I've trying to make now sort of seems silly.
I guess, my plans are all in my head, and never written down. Even in life, what I end up doing tends to be like a drop of water in a pool, it starts off small and they tend to become active or real the moment I decide to act on them, which happens to be the point in which the ripple has developed into a series of progressive evolutions that ultimately is big enough to act upon. These resident ideas gain definition as the days progress. Maybe that's how things should be, i.e, no need to commit to a plan when the conditions around you change?
Anyway, so I'm, I guess, still on that plan, and that plan has adapted to new ideas and feelings that have recently become apparent. So, In this way, my plan then is to do less running, but still to do it fairly regularly and not stress about what specific running I'm doing (long, fast, short whatever).
While I was on my run, and having this proclivity to be a little more casual than in the past about my running, I sort of started feeling that I want to do a little more running. This is good because that means my plan has just changed. To what end, I don't know but I have this feeling that I want to do more regular 10km distances.
One thing I felt while I was running is that the impact on the feet is a lot more intrusive to me, and that could quite possibly be something that is only very apparent to me because I'd not been subjecting myself to this distance regularly. While that makes sense, I think it's also that I'm a lot heavier than I've ever been so that also plays a part so the impact is more.
So, today, which is boxing day, I decided to buy a new pair of running 'springy' shoes. These are interesting because, unlike all my other running shoes, they have carbon plates in them. So it should reduce overall fatigue and mean that I can probably get more comfort while I'm running. So, I'll be taking these out for more runs moving forward.
So let's see what the stats say... also here are the details.
It took about an hour (54 mins) to run about 11km (11.1), which tells me my average pace was 4'58 which is slow but fine however I also managed to run the fastest 400m this year, and it happened to be the 3rd fastest 10km this year too (who knew!). Not that bad really. The next best 10km was in Amsterdam in October (5'32/km), followed by the best, which was in Venice in November (5'25/km). See this for a nice little graph.
So 2022, hasn't been as bad as I thought, granted I didn't do as much running, but what I did do was OK!