First long run in the bag!

Last night was spent in a very different manner to my usual Saturday nights. I did some ironing, watched 'Horton Hears A Who' (highlight of which was Katie - only in a couple of scenes but hilarious - vid below), and not a drop of alcohol passed my lips. I was nicely tired and, to be honest, wasn't really missing going out on the town much.

Having such a saintly evening meant that I was up early today and feeling pretty spritely. After faffing around for literally hours (I'm the queen of procrastination), I set out for a long run at just before 3pm. The weather here in Bristol was absolutely ideal. Gorgeous sunshine, cold, but not freezing, with a breeze but not windy. My route takes me alongside a river (I think it's a cut actually - doesn't lead anywhere!), then across a couple of busy roads and alongside the main river (erm...River Avon?) for a good 3 miles. It's a long straight road which I sometimes find boring but today quite enjoyed. I think it helped that I was able to distract myself from running and let my mind wander off by drafting what I was going to write in today's blog entry in my head! It also helped that I'd managed to find a download of a 2 hour mix that Sub Focus (drum n bass producer/dj) did for Radio 1, and that did a sterling job of keeping my pace up and keeping me in the trance-like zone that I need to be in to run for over an hour. Got it from the Dubplate Digest website, and there are loads of others there, so now I can have a different dj providing the soundtrack to each of my long runs (not sure what to do when they go above 2 hours - I'll address that nearer the time)!

After reaching Sea Mills train station, I turned back and traced my route back, adding on an extra small circuit (with a hill!), at the end as I had planned to run for 90 minutes and had made better time than I expected. In the end I managed 9.7 miles in 90 minutes (9.3 mins per mile). This was much better than I expected for my first long run, so I'm really happy. There wasn't any point when it felt like really hard going either, so it seems that even the small amount of committed training that I've done so far is having an effect. The only downside is that my lower back is really stiff and painful now (the result of an ice incident this time last year), so I'm going to start doing some exercises to strengthen my core, as advised by a physio.

Argh - this is a really long post and I wasn't planning for it to be!