Beautiful Day For a Run

The women's fit for life group went for a 12 mile run on Good Friday.  I wasn't free to go with them and as they had planned a 10km for Saturday morning I decided to go go my own way as I wanted to do at least 16km, but the aim was 18km.

The group normally meets at 9.30am but as I was going by myself today I gave myself the luxury of a lie in and began my run at 11am.  I decided to take it easy and bring my phone with me to take some photos.  After the first 1km I stopped at the local tennis club to stretch.  From there it was out to Oak Park.

Entrance to Oak Park

This arch in olden times was the entrance to the Oak Park house and estate of 700 acres of woodland and lakes.  The arch was also someone's house and as you pass under it you can see the door which was the entrance.

I kept running out the road and aimed to link to the route that I had been running the past few weeks with the hope that this add-on would give me enough to hit 18km.

Colours

I love the colours of the fields this time of year and it is great to be able to run with these views.  I reached the long mile and was feeling good.  There is a lovely downhill at the beginning of the long mile, but what goes down must go up...

The Long Mile

The rest of the run was nice and I did stop on the way back to the car to refill my water bottle as I had misjudged how much I would need and how far I was running.  When I got back to where the car was I was just over 2km short of a half marathon distance.  The block where my car was parked was a 2.4km loop so I kept going.  The speed workouts I've been doing are really starting to pay off and I finished the 21.1km strong, in 1.54.09, a new best and a really enjoyable run.  I did stop the watch twice for the initial stretch and when I refilled my bottle, but not for any photo taking so I'm really happy with the time.

My Garmin