Wild woods & a stag!

Looked quite nice out today (rather than being bloody freezing!), so thought it would be a good chance to get out into the daylight. I planned an 8k route (I’m still supposed be taking it steady, so this is just about ok) and got my gear on. Well, I missed my first turn and managed to run an extra couple of k’s before I was back on track! Oops… I thought I’d be ok with that though as I had done nearly 10k in the week and that went ok, so I carried on! I’m kind of enjoying the road/pavement running as the smoothness (most of the time) is giving me a good opportunity to manage my cadence and to monitor how my feet are hitting the ground. I’ve come to the conclusion (with no scientific basis) that some of my achilles/heal injury may have been caused through me “over pronating” i.e. my feet are rolling further across the natural line of the foot, resulting in my big toe and in turn Plantar facia being overworked (my toes are already wonky, so no further encouragement needed there…) which is not good and long term can be a big and painful problem. As a result, I’m re-training myself to make better contact (with the ground) and ensure that I use or push off with all the front of the foot rather than just the big toe area, but as soon as I’m off the flat it’s hard to manage or notice...

That said, I can only do so much road running before I get bored, particularly if I’m on my own, so off into the woods I went. It’s so beautiful being in the trees, seeing birds flitting about and other things scurrying about in the undergrowth. Even better today - just as I was getting to the top of a small hill in the woods I thought I could see something moving - what I saw was a stag! A real life actual stag, just standing there (well eating actually!). My scent or hyperventilating gave me away as it had seen me within a couple of seconds. I was expecting it to bolt, but it sort of looked at me for a little while, sauntered a few steps further away and looked again. I thought this could go on for a while, so started running again - immediately it vanished deeper into the wood. Great to see though.

Rest of the run went pretty good, no pain anywhere to be concerned about - only some slight discomfort in the heal, but I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Looking forward to getting out with the guy’s next week.