Running out to the west

The decision this week was whether to run long on Tuesday or Wednesday. I had run very badly on the Sunday at Hartlepool for a terrible 4miles and Monday night wasn't much better. My niggles in the right ankle were beginning to make me thing I had to back off a bit. However the forecast was for good still nights on Tuesday and wed. Tuesday was to be not too cold [-1^C] and clear skyed. Wed was forecast to be warmer [4^C] but cloudy. Anyway decided Tuesday would be best and planned to head off from work out the Deeside way / North Deeside road for 12miles before returning to work to pick the car up.

So Tuesday came. Really bright sunny day and setting off at 4:30pm it was nice to run in the weak sunshine. The Deeside way is really a pleasant route and the first place I ever did any distance at all. It was funny running past some of the places I remember from those early runs. Places where I turned back with a calf strain, or places where it felt like I had 'gone long'. So out the way I trotted and just past [the remains of] Beilside station I came to a spot of major flooding. No way round and even the cyclists were struggling through. So it was up the embankment path and out onto North Deeside Road. I didn't find a way back down though and just carried on out through Milltimber and Peterculter until I eventually ran out of pavement somewhere near Drumoak and about 5 miles from Crathes castle.

One major thing out there. I was running in shorts as I had all my running tights in the wash and out there, just at the end of the twilight it was seriously cold. Once I got back into the built up area at 'culter it really was noticeably warmer. From there it was the long way back into Aberdeen and up that bl**dy hill to Altens. It really is very very steep!

All in all a good night - 21.4 miles in around a leisurely 4hrs.

Felt really good today after the long run and by the evening was confident enough of doing a decent run with no bad effects. Would have been nice to do 5.2miles but settled for 3.8miles safe in the knowledge that I had not pushed it in anyway. The big surprise today though was at work when I was asked about where I went running to. Open mouths all around as I don't think anybody thought I was capable of doing stuff like 20mile runs. Now that felt good!