Week 1

Tuesday

First day of training started off with a 4 mile run.  Me , Kath and Sam ran to Baddeley Green; along Leek New Road to Newford Crescent; Millrise Road and Back to base.  We cut off the garage part by running along Clive Avenue so that the run wouldn't be too long since I was still recovering from my op.  To my disappointment, I did find the run quite tough and only just about managed to get up the slight incline to Milton  but the main things were that I remained running and I didn't get any pain from it.

 

Thursday

Scheduled run for today was for 3 miles. Encouraged by the lack of pain following Tuesday's run; we decided to run a little faster today.  On tuesday we were averaging around 14 minute miles but today we "sped" up to almost 12 minute miles.  Hazel joined us today and we ran to Limekiln lights and back, just fractionally less than the 3 miles but we didn't mind so early in the training plan.

 

Saturday

The run that I have really been looking forward to - Hanley Parkrun.  I was good and managed to stick to WALKING to the park.  I must admit though that it was mainly thanks to the fact that Kath was going to be there and I knew what the first thing that she would ask me and I was correct.  It seemed absolutely ages since I'd taken part in running the parkrun and I worked it out that the last time was sometime in September. The weather was perfect and we both thoroughly enjoyed the run.  To me it felt very slow but afterwards I realised that we had averaged 11 minute miles.  I worried that I was going to be in pain again.

 

Sunday

I was very pleased to find that I had no ill-effects from yesterday's run so I am going to conclude that I am finally on the mend. Today's long-run was actually a quite short 4 mile run but in the end we didn't even manage that.  Kath and I decided to meet at Festival Park after she finished work at around 6 pm.  However, by then, the pavements were badly iced over and continuing to get worse.  We decided to try a mile on the flat to see how we'd go on.  After a loop to Tesco and back, which came to 1.61 miles we decided to give up.  It wasn't worth risking an injury when it was so slippery.  We have plenty of time to catch up what we'd lost before Barcelona.