Blood and sweat

A solo long run this morning. Having fought off the instinct not to go at all, I remembered I’d already told a few mates of my plans, so couldn’t back out now. With that in mind, I pulled on my kit, picked out a bit of Led Zeppelin on the iPod and set Nike+ to 10miles and set out.

I hadn’t planned exactly where I was going but had a rough route in mind which I suspected might do the trick: straight to the paths alongside the River Mersey, head downstream as far as Sale Water Park, then east to Palatine Road, and back. (The map’s here)

Nice weather for it – dry, bright, a stiff breeze in parts but largely still. The paths were still cut up and muddy in places, but all were (just about) passable.

Considering it’s very close to a busy motorway, and snakes through built up Chorlton and Didsbury, it’s amazing how far from the city you can feel with just a hundreds yards or so of nature reserves between you and endless housing estates.

The first thing I noticed was that I was far from alone. There were dozens of runners out there today.

The second thing I noticed – around 4.5miles – was blood trickling down my face. Quite what triggered a nose bleed on a pretty uneventful run, I’ve no idea, but it showed no sign of stopping until 10 minutes or so into my warmdown. So for six miles, as well as facing the irritating trickle across my top lip, I also attracted increasingly puzzled looks as I ran past the other runners, dog walkers and couples out on the paths.

The third and final thing I noticed was the pace. I’d assumed that running without my much-fitter training partner, I’d slump to a trudge, but Nike+ reckons I actually upped the pace fractionally from our 9 miler last week and crept ever closer to a solid 8-min-mile training run.

It’s been a few hours now since the run, and my legs are already reminding me that I’ve punished them a little, but nothing too severe. Let’s see how sore I am in the morning.