I had to really force myself out for the hill session tonight because I didn't want to leave Ruby alone. I had only been home from work for an hour and a half and Duncan was going out for a drink after work so wouldn't be home until later on and I had to leave Ruby alone again. She had already been left for eight hours. For anyone who doesn't know, Ruby suffers terribly from separation anxiety. If you have a dog, you'll probably understand but if you're not a dog person, you'll think I'm being overly sensitive about leaving her.
Anyway, I did manage to get out and went along to meet the others at Sheephouse Lane car park. When I arrived there were a few there already, along with two lads on crossers and their mate on a scooter! Steve took the decision not to do reps up and down to the pigoen tower, because of the idiots on bikes and so instead we ran over towards Dangerous Corner. By now there was quite a big group of us.
We ran along to the wooden bridge at the bottom of dangerous corner and then the session was up through the plantation to the stile onto George's Lane, straight across to the other stile then up to Noon Hill.
When I stated the climb up to George's Lane I was feeling quite good and even overtook a few people and it wasn't until half way up noon hill that I started to get some pain in my right calf. I could tell that I was struggling as I got overtaken by a couple of girls on the descent back to George's Lane and I don't usually get overtaken on descents. Once onto George's Lane I had to stop to stretch out my calf.
I got back down to the bridge and started my second climb but half way up to George's Lane I had to stop again because I felt like my calf was going to explode. Steve was coming down the hill so he stopped and had a chat to me about trying to improve my running style and he said that a week on Tuesday at the track he would take his iPad along and film me and we'd work on things I could try to improve but that it would take a good few weeks to start seeing any results.
Due to my calf pain, Steve got me doing a shorter session and once I was onto George's Lane again, he told me to run along to a stile a bit further down and then do reps up and down to Noon Hill. He said to do three reps and then go back down to the bridge. I ended up doing four reps instead and probably had time for a fifth in hindsight but I was getting slower and slower each rep. My calf did start to ease off a little but it was still quite tight. Luckily I've booked in for physio tomorrow so hopefully that will sort it out.
We regrouped back at the bridge and then had a lovely run back to the car park, where I looked down at my leg and a big fly (horsefly?) was on it and I could see something sticking into my leg. I pulled it off and it drew blood. Yet another bite to add to the collection!
Needless to say, I came home to a puddle of wee on the kitchen floor and poor Ruby cowering in the corner. There's no point in getting angry with her, as that won't help the anxiety at all and it's definitely not a house training issue.
When I uploaded my run to Strava I found that, rather ridiculously, I managed to get a course record on 'Dangerous Corner - Belmont Road Climb'. When I looked into this, only one other girl has recorded a time here so I'm first out of two, however it turns out I'm 9th out of 24 overall, so I'm quite pleased with that although I'm pretty sure the others mustn't have been trying very hard because I really struggled tonight.
Total distance - 4 miles
http://www.strava.com/activities/161330092/overview
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