Recovery on the beach

The sun was back again today. Thank goodness. Buchanan was away to the hills and I was intending to do the least intense of a tiny recovery run, and then maybe tidy a drawer. That didn't seem very exciting though so I went to the beach instead. It was still  a very lazy, easy run but much more interesting. There were a lot of big clouds boiling up in the sky but it was warm.

Along the way I passed some tiny villages, but there was no sign of their diminutive inhabitants.

Warm weekend.

 

We did 17 miles in the boiling heat at the beach yesterday with Amanda coming most of the way and then catching up with Ben and Alison for an extended lunch afterwards.

Today we headed for the hills. Unlike last Sunday it was a warm gentle day. To my delight we ran into Douglas and Richard from club about a mile into the run, half way up Beech Avenue. That put me in a good mood for the rest of the run. We ran past quite a few grumpy looking hill walkers. I think the heat was getting to them.

Running up hill was hard as usual and big drips of sweat and sunscreen were dropping off my head. It went by pretty quickly though and soon we were on the long downhill from Scald Law, down the side of East Kip down to the Howe and then it's NEARLY flat and downhill to finish.

On the uphills I was thinking about Angela Mudge and her advice not to think about how hard it is.  On the way down I was thinking about Morgan Donnelly and his advice about how to tackle it. I've embedded a video with his advice on hill running above. It's worth a watch.

Back at the van we ate a punnet of cherries and some bananas and all was right with the world.

Haggis!

Me and the girls. Surely Not!

It is summer break from university so I made it to the club session last night for the first time in maybe 10 months. The session was Gordon's "Follow the Leader" hill reps. Great fun. Everyone takes it in turn to lead a 4 minute trip along, up and down the paths of Arthur's Seat. I am anal enough normally to return people to where they're meant to be pretty much bang on time, but last night some de-mob happiness got the better of me and I took the team on a 7 minute run on the gentle paths and coconut scented corridors of gorse on Whinny Hill, arriving back at Gordon sans 2 people! Oh the shame. I was just going to go and look for them when they emerged on a headland some distance away. How could it all have gone so wrong?

Also, the ladies' relay team (known as  the Hairy Haggis relay) for the Edinburgh Marathon on Sunday had lost their last leg runner to injury, so I was quickly substituted in. Glory be. I get to run the last 5 miles of a marathon on fresh legs.

I have been tinkering with essays and snoozing all day so might go a nice run at the beach tonight when Peter gets home.