THE LONG SLOW ROAD TO RECOVERY AND HOPEFULLY THE V.L.M. by Raven1

well after 2 weeks of no running here due to the weather a few of us braved a sunday morning run, and we hit the streets...... for most of the first 5 miles we were able to either run on the path or when the path was too icy, we ran on the road.... providing there were no cars and the road wasnt too icy either!

the first loop of the town took us just over the hour, and by then two of my fellow runners decided that it was time to call it a morning ( one as she normally only does 5 miles anyway and the other as she normally only does about 4 miles so she was very pleased that she had managed to do 5!).

the two silly souls left ( my friends husband who is running edingburgh marathon and myself doing london) decided to carry on and do another 5 ..... ( not much of a problem for my friends husband as his PB is aboout the 3hr mark and he travels overseas to do marathons) but myself on the other hand..... well.................

seeing as i havent run that far since the great north run 2008, as of my injury. it was a very testing time.... i know that i can do 8 miles comfy at my pace, so with pete a little way ahead of me showing me the way .... we plodded on... and it was a plod for pete.. (he stayed with me all the way round)...bless him. when we had done 2 miles we turned of the main road to get back into town, thats where the fun began.

as we live in the country, the small back roads havent been gritted and as we found out very very slippery!!!! as i injured my self running a cross country fun run, i vowed never to run cross country again, but due to the state of the roads we had to! running on the grass verge with a dike that is no more than 2 foot away from the road edge... doesnt give you a lot of room if you hit a patch of ice...

i would say that after about 1/2 a mile i got into a nice stride and plodded on, walking only when we had to cross the frozen road or driveway, then we ended up running along the side of some fields....

lets just say my nice clean trainers which i have had for a few months are now well and truly muddied... mud up the back of my legs .. added to the look. (nice!)

so we managed a 5 miler in 56 mins... slow even by my standards but conditions meant it wasnt too bad. so a 10 mile training run in the ice ended in a time of roughly 2 hrs. not bad, not good either 15 mins off my 10 mile pb, but at least i got out and reached my 10 mile target  just 3 days after christmas.. only another 16 to go!!!!!!!!!!