weary and a tender achilles..

5m in 34min with three 0.33m @ 5:50. up through Hyde Park and a fairly direct route to Lancaster Gate. One faster-pace section there, one back to Hyde Park Corner and one to finish along the Mall. after two fairly tiring runs on the last two days, this was a weary one from the start, but had a colleague come out and join me, which pepped me up a bit. he's just back into it after a few weeks' break, so there was no pushing to go faster. today's quite hot (around 25C) and the park was very dry and oppressive. added to that was the tree pollen that was pretty heavy again today. pretty pleased with the effort i managed to muster, especially for the second faster section, which i did alone. hopefully this will all bode well for the race next weekend. however, i'm not too keen on what seems to be quite a persistent strained feeling in my right achilles. it's been around for a few days, and i rubbed in some ibuprofen gel last night and this morning - to what seems like no avail. started yesterday's run and today's slower to warm it up and get into my stride, and really didn't feel it at all in the runs themselves - not even when i went up on my toes for the faster sections. but now i'm sat back down, there's definitely an ache again. will have to do some stretching and keep adding the gel.