easy going thursday..

7.5m at 7:10 - long one round Hyde Park. no speed up - took it steady. nice clear conditions, and quite a bit of sunshine. felt fantastic, no stress and no aches. just what you want on a thursday lunchtime!

after playing a game of football last night, the legs were a little stiff. didn't get a huge amount of sleep either, as Joe was up early and wanting to do things. will have to catch-up tonight - i doubt the election coverage will be gripping enough.. especially as most of the results only come out at 3-4am. i can wait til the morning. anyway, legs were a little tight, but i didn't get any dynamic stretching in before starting off. we took it easy and didn't noticeably pick-up throughout. the guy who came with me from work did start to feel it around 4.5m, but he was happy to just stop the chatting and keep the pace. i tried to back off to 7:15, but we'd got up to a steady rate of 7:00 by then, and it felt just right and i couldn't back off much. some runs just feel right.

will probably run a 5miler tomorrow, perhaps with a couple of half-mile speed-ups in the middle. apparently the weather will cool off at the weekend, so tomorrow's the last we'll see of the sun for a few days. i should be taking my ipod touch up to the apple store as it won't play through the dock at the moment, but the running's kinda taken over at the moment..

shoes are still a bother. i loosen them out to wear down to football (not on the astroturf), and when i did that last night, they felt to me to be too small, butting up against my toes. plus the gel pad underneath my fore-foot on the left seems to in some way imbalance me. when i tighten them back up again and run, they don't trouble me, and feel good and responsive. perhaps it'll just take a little while for me to settle in to them.

we've thought about hill-training at lunchtime by tubing it out to Greenwich or Hampstead, but decided that would be a little obsessive. i think i'll just save them up for the weekend, when i can get to Greenwich Park more easily. maybe even this sunday!

still no decisions on summer 10ks - maybe the Rye run in mid-July. maybe the Orpington 10k at the start of July.

will take a few minutes this afternoon to look around for some top-notch marathon-runner blogs - to see if i can get some good tips on how to make this better.