Slowly but Surely

Tonight I finally landed back on my feet. I am not going to get carried away and claim that I am 100% fit but it was awesome to be out the door and not in pain for the first time since February 5th.

I said I was going to enforce a lay off after Leadville and I did. Even after I had decided I was ok to resume running, I gave it another 10 days and fingers crossed it feels like it's helped.

Where we live now in Gustard Wood, North Hertfordshire, we are out of reach of shops, restaurants, people, even roads. There is a local pub but you need a headtorch to get there after dark (which I quite like).

All this plus we actually live ON a trail. It is almost too much to take in right now after living in London for 9 years, that I can turn right or left out of the front door and be on trails. Anyway I ran an hour tonight, just an easy tempo hour through fields, woodland trails and back country roads and in all that time saw 1 person and zero cars. I don't care what anybody says, that is pretty great. The trails aren't exactly going to scare mountain runners away but there are some lumps and bumps so all in all it blows running round Battersea Park out of the water (I still love you Battersea).

I decided to change it up a little on the gear front so I bought a pair of NB Minimus and some drymax socks and it feels great. I think road running in the Minimus is a disaster waiting to happen, but for shorter runs on springy grass and woodland trail man do they feel fast. They should do at 6oz.

I am going to go the other way too and buy a pair of Hoka's. With all my injury problems this year it makes sense to me to have a pair of shoes that offer the maximum protection from the kind of injuries I have sustained. That and the old faithful Asics GT's and I'm good to go.

Ready to launch the North Downs Way 2012 races this weekend which I am excited about. It's great having the experience of the first race under our belts, so much to improve upon with just a few tweaks here and there - nothing major. I am looking at point to point for the 100 mile runners though.... I think the journey makes a lot more sense that way.

The South Downs Way Race is a few weeks behind it, we still need to do some recce-ing down on the course before we can launch it but we'll be good to go inside October too for next years edition of the pre-existing race. Good times.