Weekend 'Long' Run - 17km (Taking it easy as part of a week of recovery)

dannewton just finished a 16.92km run, that lasted for 111 minutes.
This run helped dannewton burn 1252.0 calories.

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Description from Strava: After the high mileage logged over the past 7 weeks, which culminated in over 80km run in the 7th week (along with the marathon last Saturday), I decided I was long overdue a much easier week. The body can only take so much progressive overloading before performance is affected, and although I didn't feel tired, I didn't want to push my luck and end up injured

You can see the comparison of the total weeks in the graph below:

With 11km on both Monday and Wednesday, extra rest days on Thursday and Saturday, and then almost 17km today, I've completed a much easier 40km for the week. That might still sound a lot to some people, but it was significantly lower for me compared to previous weeks

I still can't quite believe how good I felt after the long run last weekend...

Anyway, with rain forecast later today, I decided to try to get out early this morning to run in the dry. It was slightly foggy first thing, but that seemed to lift, although I was to find more patchy fog later on in the session

I was lacking a little inspiration on where to go, especially as due to the 'recovery' thing I didn't want to run too far today. In the end I decided to just run up along the bypass, all the way up to Bunkers Hill where the 'newer' part of the bypass joins onto the old bypass.

Its a route I've done several times before, and I knew it was approx 16km and would take me a little under 2 hours... perfect.

The run itself was more of the same easy zone 2 stuff that I've banging on about for the last 3 months.

If I sound like a broken record then I apologize, but as far as I'm concerned its made a huge distance to my running, not just in allowing me to massively increase my weekly mileage, but also making sure I'm always able to recover in time for the next run. It was only meant a short experiment while waiting to recover from the injury over the summer, but now that I'm injury free I'm still going to keep it going into next year

But yeah, another comfortably easy run, pretty uneventful until I saw the below pictures

Regular Readers may remember me posting about the floods 2 weeks ago, and I showed pictures of the River Witham which had burst its banks and had flooded the nearby fields

Taken 2 weeks ago

Taken earlier today

We have had some rain since, but nothing like the torrential downpour we had from 2 weeks ago, and finally the water levels have mostly returned to normal

Taken 2 weeks ago

Taken earlier today

Look at all that mud! You can't see very well in the picture above but several of the fences have been damaged too

The below picture shows the biggest difference... The river in the middle had almost completely joined with the drain (man-made river to help manage potential flooding)

Taken 2 weeks ago

Taken earlier today

...and now the levels of water have dropped so the River and the Drain are now separate again, and the path in the middle is now visible again. Which is good to see as I often run down that path alongside the river, so its good to see I can now use it again

maybe I'll head along there next weekend...?

With the run completed, it rounds out a nice easy week of training, and I can now return to my usual mileage for next week. I have a few chores to catch up on for today (mostly cleaning, along with popping up to the shops for supplies snacks). And then this evening I will start planning my week off work.... not sure what I'm doing yet, but will be hoping to try a few more interesting runs with the extra time available.

I do need to make sure I actually manage to do something interesting with my week off work, it'll just be a waste otherwise!

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If you would like to check out this activity on strava you can see it here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/10205382922

About the Athlete: Living in the UK, I am an intermittent Runner, but always striving for more consistency. When I'm not training I can be found photographing insects or listening to really loud angry music (which is the best type of music obviously!)

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