Companion to owls

Last week was definitely more of a challenge. Other commitments necessitated a bit of shuffling to get everything fitted in, so I chose to do the long walk on Wednesday morning, before work. Here I am at 0455, just before setting off, with bright good morning face and trusty TTMA coffee mug:

It was a very wet morning and rather foggy as well, which contributed to a navigational error that turned a nine-miler into a ten-miler. The early part of the route passed through a belt of woodland and it was thick enough under the trees that most of my headtorch beam was bouncing back into my eyes and not doing a lot of illumination. I've experienced the effect before while running on the high ground above Port St Mary in the early morning, and there's not much you can do except trust your sense of direction. In ancient woodland with a spaghetti-like network of paths, that's a risky strategy, and I chose wrongly. I knew I'd end up in more or less the right area whichever way I went, so it was just a case of hoping for the best and resigning myself to a bit more time on the road to join up the dots if I went wrong. So it goes.

I felt the length of this walk in a way I haven't with any of the others - it may be that I've reached the point where I'm starting to extend my endurance. Having done another long walk the preceding Sunday, rather than doing them a week apart as usual, may also be a factor, but I was gently achey by the time I got to work at 0825. Walking from home to work by the scenic route seemed to go well, so I'll do the same in subsequent weeks where my weekends are out of commission.

The rest of the week didn't go entirely to plan. Sunday's short, slow walk took place as intended, but several nights' poor sleep meant Friday's speed session was bumped to the following Monday - today - to try and give myself a bit more recovery time. Things like this are annoying, but there's no point in either whingeing or beating yourself up - the walks have got to be done. I did get the session in this morning, the same route as last week's with exactly the same time, down to the nearest ten seconds - how's that for consistency? I'm hitting 14 minutes, 13 seconds to the mile on average over these short bursts and 17-18 minutes to the mile at the relaxed pace I'm using for the longer walks. I've got four months to close that gap.

Day off tomorrow, then up another notch with a slightly longer pair of walks on Wednesday and Thursday, then the next long one on Saturday. That'll make four in total this week, with the schedule a bit more compressed than usual, to account for last week's dropped session and next week's reshuffling. My spreadsheet-fu is proving very handy. 

I've booked myself in to see a physio on Wednesday. My dodgy tendons feel fine at the moment - I think my regular sessions with the Evil Foam Roller of Doom are helping - but it seems prudent to get what help I can BEFORE things go wrong. I could also do with some advice on minimising the damage I'm doing to my back by using my office chair as a general target for my bodyweight rather than sitting on it like a normal person. I am working on it!