A hard frost overnight led to a beautiful 'sparkly' morning, absolutely perfect running weather. The addage 'There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes!' sprang to mind. With that thought I donned my hat and new gloves with 'fingerpoint technology' and headed off on the same off-road route as last Saturday. I was expecting this to be a less muddy affair with hopefully a lot of it being frozen.
The left knee was still a little stiff but was ok once warmed up. I headed off across the frosty fields sparkling in the sun! All the mud was now pretty hard with unsuspecting pools of water if you took the wrong footing. The stiles were very slippy and had to be negotiated with caution, I noticed the unusual patterns the frost had made and stopped for a couple of quick photos above. On across the railway line and the farmer had now re-erected his electric fence, so had to squeeze down the trail between it and the row of trees.
I knew the pace was slow but with all the potential ankle breaking ground I was just taking it nice and slow and enjoying the weather. This was confirmed when the 'endomondo lady' sang out 32 mins for the first 3 miles - a heady 10:30 pace!! On to the country lanes and across the field skirting the motorway, this field was now much more runnable in its frozen state. I knew I would be approaching my favourite hounds soon behind their 'sturdy' gate and decided to take a quick video!
After that excitement, it was on with the last 2.5 miles, back now around the 8-8:30 pace. The gloves had worked really well allowing me to operate the phone without having to remove them! The sun was getting higher and the frost was starting to retreat from the last fields. The final run in down the main road and it brought up 7.25 miles, 45 miles for the week so far. So that's the first two weeks down and 136 miles in the bank! Looks like another frosty run in the morning...
Stats
Distance: 7.25 miles
Time: 1:10:04
Janathon Total Distance: 136.10 miles
Streak Total Distance: 1760 miles
Fantastic mileage - well done. The photos of the frost are lovely - those dogs would scare the #### out of me!
ReplyDeleteExcellent running for the week Andrew. It's good to see that you're giving those Janathoners a good run (pardon the pun) for their money :) Keep going, only 2 weeks to go!
ReplyDeleteLovely photos! Congrats on your run. Sounds lovely. Nice photos too. I recently bought a pair of iGloves. Great to be able to operate the phone without taking them off! :)
ReplyDeleteAmazing photos, I thought it was a sea urchin at first glance! And that’s some amazing mileage… I get the feeling you’re enjoying it? Keep up the good work. I’ve heard of the saying ‘my dogs are barking’!
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