Best Of

Jools, the single word Wattsville is enough to evoke memories!

Thankfully, serious injuries on bikes are still very, very rare Simon - that's the clsoest I've come in nearly 50 years of cycling!

Not sure how much appeal the White Horse will have with full on PPE involved 

Was on strava and noticed a local geezer had done a route in between the well thumbed road hills of Sheepridge and Winchbottom on a footpath. Two options too.

So thought i'd give that a whirl.

10miles on the clock before that, including up to Hotspur and down one of the Wooburn hills.

Nice road start but then into a right exposed grassy climb. Super windy. Was slightly regretting my life choices😂
Into the woods, quickly totally lost the path, so keen was i not to end up at Winchbottom thus ruining the "new route exploration".

Into a random field totally off grid, one of those that at first looks a legit path and then very quickly is very obviously not one and you're on dodgy uneven rocky traily footing and i dare say I'll have the local old man strava police onto me soon, up a steep crop field in sheer wind, nervously looking at the mileage quickly turning from "pad this out to 15" to " i need to get back in 15".

At least knew what direction I needed....glad to see a turn to my left, less glad to see it's some random farm. Praying none of those notorious farm dogs are about☺😱.

Then i spy the road..but what road.
Over a gate and i recognise it..yes!

Mess about in some more woods, though local ones bit of a local loop and back in 7.22 average for 15. Obvs massively based on the first ten. Min and a half stopped to pee, and climb over a fence, fallen tree and get through a gate..

Road tomorrow then.😉

Binned the bolt on in the end and just did a wander with some seg thrashes here and there.

Couple of goes each at two short segs, then the other 3 ranged from 0.37m to around double.

4.35 pace felt strong on a 0.28 miler, with every so slight incline at the start, and took the 2 short reps.

Equal to the second with 1st quite annoyingly on the 0.37miler, which had a slight incline and into damm wind! Means it shows as a crown on your run, but doesn't technically show in your locker.

Found this bizarre little offroad 3/4miler buried away, owned by a local don who has 25 pages of segs split between runs and cycles, that "only" needed 6.05 pace, and thought i'd cigar it when starting off down at 5.30 pace.

Only to find 2-3 steepish but short climbs, that saw me at about 7.40 pace at one moment, and thought i'd blown it, but scraped in sub 6 in the end for that one.

Last one was an appetising half mile rep round a park, that only needed 5.45 pace or something. 
Only problem was utterly ferocious wind, that on the warm up at the start I'd thought, sod attempting that one.
However, i had one last bit of energy, and had parked there, so thought I would.

Put in, and would comfortably have taken it....before then seeing I'd somehow managed to get the route slightly wrong, maybe skimming a little off the corners, but even sillier, had registered 5th fastest time on the 7.05 pace cool down that took place immediately after
The geezer who holds this one also holds the one I equalled, so he's had a let off today

Garhh.

Anyway, 9.5miles all in, 3 segs, 1 joint 1st, 1 5th on a cool down, another fun day's work while maintaining the "proper" training sort of illusion.

Wycombe on Sky tonight, hopeful.

You've made me think of Chris De Burgh there DT. Never a good thing. He ran off with the nanny and then composed 'Lady In Red' to win his wife back 

Sorry for bringing a bit of romance to the thread

perhaps more cheek to cheek in this scenario. 

I love the fact that you've run those AM stats, love it.

For the life of me I don't know how you manage to run the 1st rep / mile of a session as your fastest. You must be really effective at warming up and have no fear! Decent size session there. Not as big as the Steve Fell session I've been invited to on Saturday but you know, not bad 

Yep, if you race a lot, you definitely have to take a hit on those.

It's that fine line sometimes - desire to race, versus knowing you need a proper block of training to get better times.

When racing is back i'll probably do a few as looseners, not worrying at all about times, and then see what's what.
Not at all adverse to a bit more "experiences" these days than just race times though, hence some of the random trips, the Welsh mile and Endure though!