New turf

Just need to acknowledge my wife for coming up with the title of this post. You won't see it yet, but by the time you get to the end of this post you will come to appreciate just how clever it was. 

I found a new place to run today. Not a particularly exciting place, but that did not stop it being really good. Much better than I expected in fact.

I had a bit of a brick session today. Recovery spin with a solid little interval session afterwards. Following on from some of my posts during the week, I thought I would give running around an oval a go. The main reason was to get off the footpath and onto some grass. We have a football oval nearby which was a perfect candidate.

Now this will probably surprise some people, particularly the runners out there, but I haven't really spent much time running on ovals. I have done it a bit, but that was usually because I had nowhere else to run. Choosing to run around an oval isn't something I have done much of. Given that I wasn't sure how it would go. Would it be boring, what would the surface be like, would it be slow etc?

The answers to those questions are, no, flat and no, in that order.

I was surprised how unboring it was actually. Admittedly I wasn't able to spend the entire hour at the oval, since there was a football game starting up and I was getting in the way, so I am not sure if I would have got bored if I had been there longer. But for the time I did spend there, it was strangely compelling. I think it was the quantifiability of it (not sure that is a word). By that I mean, the oval gives you a very good idea of how far you have come and how far you have to go. Very handy for intervals.

The surface was really very decent. Perhaps not surprising given it is a football oval so is intended to be run on a lot. There were a couple of rough patches where the grass had been worn away, but on the whole, a surface that was easy to be confident in. Not sure I would run there in the dark, but low light would be okay.

In terms of speed, I was surprised just how unslow (quick?) it was. About the same speed as the footpath I found. In fact the efforts even felt a little easier. That might have been because I was fresh, but I think another part of it comes back to what I mentioned above, the fact that you know exactly how much further you have. Rather than going just by time and thinking, 'Oh man I have another 30 seconds to go', you can look up and think, I just have to run to that point over there. For some reason that seemed to hurt less. 

Finally, the bit I liked the most, is running on the grassed surface just felt good. I spent just under half the session on the grass and the rest on my usual footpaths. I would swear that I was feeling physically much better for the grass sections. Once I started on the paths, the usual sore points started to flare up again. I could see myself coming out of a run on the grass feeling quite a bit fresher.

Speaking of fresher. I am really not feeling it now. Totally exhausted in fact. I feel very much like I am at the end of a solid week of training. Another good week, and another big step in the right direction, but solid nonetheless (great word that, why use three words when you can just make it one big long one). I was feeling quite shattered heading into the session this morning, but got through thanks to some gentle cajoling from my wife 'you don't really have a choice, so go'. But I am well and truly done like a roast chicken dinner now. Speaking of roast chicken dinner....