Exploring the woods

Looks like winter doesn't really want to give in to spring yet. This week has been quite cold, with minimum temperatures again below freezing. As a result, I arrived home today after my 12km run with a very, very, very cold right hand... for some reason we refuse to acknowledge the cold in April when it has already been warm enough to wear shorts and t-shirts, so I had gone out with capri's and t-shirt when in fact it would have been appropriate to wear long pants, long sleeves and even gloves.


Going back to the beginning of the week... nothing to report about the 5km jog alone on Wednesday, while on Thursday the 12km fast with my son in the stroller was interesting. First of all I realized that now I prefer to run alone so starting next week I will try to run early in the morning, before my husband leaves for work. As for the workout itself, I started slow and increased my speed in the second half, achieving a spectacular negative split and even my PB on the 10K, if we consider the last 10km (1:02:03, I'm a slow runner). Maybe I could aim at breaking the hour barrier in the 10K race on the 22nd, since recovery after this run was not a problem at all. And how much time is the combination "stroller + one kid" worth? The thing is... I am confident I have it in my legs to run a 10K in less than one hour, but at this moment it is not my primary goal and I don't want this to interfere with my marathon training. I still have time to decide what to do for this upcoming race, exactly two weeks. 


Today I had a comfortable 12km in my plan and for the first time I decided to just go wandering in the woods without a planned route, after all I always end up taking a wrong turn so it's not really worth it! It was a lot of fun, I had a general idea of where I wanted to go and I just kept zig-zagging across the forest, with this beautiful view

very early in the run, a couple of dead-ends, many unknown paths and lots of sand between my toes. At some point I even ended up in an open field with a few horses... This was my route in the forest:

A bit more than half of the 12km were on paths and trails in the forest, I have to get there and back and even though it's relatively close it still eats up a big chunk of the distance. Next time that I have a short run on Sunday I will go with the car to another part of this forest and I will run it all on paths and trails. This will have to wait until May though, because I have 24km planned for next Sunday, the 10K race on the 22nd and 28km on the 29th. I'm busy!