Triple Thursday Taper

STONEYMOLLAN RUN

As I am not able to go to training with Garscube tonight I thought that it would be a good idea to do one of my old favourites.  My Stoneymollan run.  A great 7.5 mile run over the hills behind my house.  I woke up early thinking that this may be the chance to try out my new head torch that hadn't yet been tested outside the dark bathroom.  With the clocks still to go forward, at 6am the sun already looked like it had been up for a couple of hours and so that put that idea on the back burner. 

The idea of doing this run was to take it easy as I have the big WHW run on Saturday and this was meant to be a taper day.  However 20 minutes into the run it looked like I was finally going to beat the one hour mark for this run.  A long standing goal for a long time.  And so I was upping the pace yet again.  My record attempt wasn't being helped by the fact that I startled a dog walker whose dogs tried to attack me.  One even trying to take a bite.  The owner warned me "There is another dog in the field further on, but don't worry it has a muzzle"  Joy.  Luckily it must have been smaller because I didn't see it.

Onto the run and into the snow.  Good day for ankle socks and the numbing freezing pain in them was weird even although my feet were nice, warm and cosy.  From the top there was fantastic views of Ben Lomond.  No time to enjoy though and glad to be going back down hill.  The pace picking up and I was flying through Balloch but hit a low point by Christie Park.  A look at my watch soon gave me the energy needed and I finished strong.

7.52 mi 57:52 @ 7:42min/mi.  Elev +281m - 279m

Woohoo.  New record and finally beat the 1hour mark

 

RAPID RECOVERY

Feeling on a high from this morning I decided to go for a recovery run before Mountain Rescue.  Bad Idea.  Why do I always try to squeeze the most out of a day.  I had 30 minutes to do 4.5 miles.

Only point of note was getting hit by a car.  No-ones fault.  He looked one way and I ran the other.  He was probably doing all of 4 miles /hr.  It hurt my hand more than anything.

4.66mi in 29.22 @ 6.18 / mi

 

MOUNTAIN RESCUE

I was getting tired by now and 12 miles of hard running was taking affect.  Not to worry.  It was GPS / Map reading training tonight and that meant an easy night of wandering around a wood.  Wrong.  To make things more fun they decided an orienteering course would be fun.  So it was on with the running shoes again.  Andy Birnie who is in the team is also a runner with Bellahouston Road Runners with similar times to me and we were warned not to team up.  We ignored this and teamed up.  Good news though I could test my head torch.  And what a head torch it is.  A few people in the team I am sure will have one next time we meet up.  It's a Petzl Myro XP and I have posted about it before.  One word. Fab.  Not sure of the distances but Andy and me finished in 29 minutes.  31 minutes quicker than the 2nd place.  There was a prize for the winners but because Andy and I weren't allowed to team up we got disqualified.  Oh well.

 

So today I must have done nearly 15 miles of running.  So much for the taper.