Laps

Not wanting to worsen my injury, I'm sticking to grass and running round the local park, doing laps. It's not as interesting as a running a route and taking in the river but it's not as bad as I'd thought it might be and it's very soft underfoot.

The other aspect of running laps is being able to see exactly how far you've run, how far you've got left and monitor your pace without having to keep listening in to your ipod. That said, it can be a bit demoralising to turn up, run around it once and realise you've got to repeat that another ten, or so, times. So I tend not to think about that at the start and focus on my heart rate and pace.

I've gone back to training at 75% of my max heart rate, to reduce the chance of further injury and rebuild my stamina. I may have been getting carried away with myself, when the injury occurred, and running to try and beat my times rather than focusing on pacing myself. You find, that after a few weeks of running at 75%, your pace naturally increases anyway, as your muscular and cardio fitness improve.

I'll stick with laps for this week and, providing the pain doesn't worsen, get back onto my routes in time for my 16 mile session on Sunday.