Cracking week Gromit!

Thursday night. In my last post I did wonder whether I was going to manage the week ahead. OK, so my week runs Mon-Sun and I still have the weekend to trip up on but the weekdays have been more than expected. Monday night was the [now usual] run out along the cliff path to Dunottar followed by an outer loop round Stonehaven. 7.6miles. The big run was planned for wednesday and even up till lunchtime I wasn't sure what the route would be. Could have been Stonehaven and back, or out the Deeside way, or a few miles in Aberdeen, then onto Stonehaven and a few more miles there. In the end what I decided on worked really well.

The route saw me leave Altens in Aberdeen [I work on top of the hill at Altens on the south side of Aberdeen], run downhill for about 1.5 miles [really!] to the riverside, across the Dee and back along the riverside to Anderson Drive. It is only when you get out the car and run that you notice just how hilly Aberdeen is! Anyway the route carried on up Anderson Drive to Great Western Road, before cutting along Holburn Rd to Anderson drive again, back along the river to cross again at Great Southern road and back up the very very long hill to Altens again. That gave me just under 8 miles, before the 12miles back along the A90 to Stonehaven. Once there a quick [actually slow] circuit of Cowie gave me 20.8 miles in just under 4 hours. Another new distance achievement.

In keeping with the lessons learned last week, I purposely ate more this week, consuming 2 gels, 2 small bananas, 1 gel pack sized custard [OK, but not too tasty], 1 small ambrosia custard pot [absolutely brilliant!], some jelly babies and the high-5 sports drink mix in my backpack's drinks bladder. All the way I felt warm enough, mentally strong and happy 90% of the time and generally OK. Definitely the proof of the pudding was in the eating!

Tonight's 3+ mile recovery run around the beach at Stonehaven was so much better than expected. Last week's was a bit stiff and uncomfortable in the beginning and end, but tonight's was pretty good. Just a bit of a struggle into the strong breeze at times.

So all in all, an excellent 4 days. Just short of 32miles in three runs, so just need to fit in 10-11 miles at the weekend to do my target mileage for the week.