Good few miles in the bag this week!

After the gloriously successful Thirsk 10, it was back to training!

Monday night I ran down to club. We had an active warm up followed by about a million each of press ups, mountain climbers and start jumps!

Tuesday was fairly steady and I had a work related meeting in the evening.

Wednesday I ran to club once more. It was the time trial tonight, but it was not the weather for it! It was rather cold and pouring with rain. Nice. I worked hard, narrowly avoiding drowning in the deluge. It later turned out however, that my time wasn't that great and I was a little disappointed.
It continued to rain for the run home and I was soaked by the time I'd done.

Thursday Hilary and I went for a steady pootle round our Sowerby Fields route. It had been raining most of the day, but stopped in time for us to go out.

Friday was a rest ahead of the Big Run on Saturday...

I normally work Saturday mornings, but having accrued some over time, I had the morning off so I could join Darren Barnes and Ray from the TEAM We Love a Challenge on Facebook for a round from Osmotherly. Don't worry, not going off to meet random blokes off the internet, I have met both these guys several times before, usually at Hardmoors events.
I felt a little apprehensive as we got ourselves organised and ready to go. I'm always a little nervous running with someone new for the first time as you don't know if you'll be able to keep up!
I needn't have worried, Darren and I were fairly evenly paced, and we walked up the big hills. It was misty, but that was ok. The sun threatened to come out from time to time. The route was pretty dry underfoot and the terrain sensible. Darren knew this route well so I left the navigation to him.
(We were running the 17mile version of the Osmotherly Phoenix.)
Our run was pleasantly uneventful.
We met up with Ray near Wheat Beck (he's been injured, so walked out to meet us, then ran back with us) and we continued to jog along at chat.
The boggy bit between Wheat Beck and Square Corner was just as boggy as usual, and the steps after crossing the Cod Beck almost at the finish were as evil as usual!
The sun had now come out, and we were actually glad it hadn't been that warm for the whole run as we were all in long leggings and sleeves and would have been far too hot!

We'd planned on having fish and chips, I wasn't sure my tummy was up to that (just usual long run tummy, no actual problems!) but I needn't have worried as the chip shop was closed. We had to settle for a cup of tea from the coffee shop instead. While we were relaxing in the sunshine with our tea, Sarah G from club and her friend came to join us! They'd also been for a run out.

Todays little jaunt takes me up to 34.6 miles for the week! Lots more than I usually do and hence the title of the blog!

Darren, me and Ray having tea in the sun!