2 Bridges; No Steps

Thursday 12th February

Run #41

5.5k Chelsea-Battersea Bridges Run

Another busy evening planned; another runch.

I am aware that maybe recently I have been taking my iPhone on runs and stopping to take pictures as a not so subtle reason to take breaks and to avoid sustained effort. I'm a pretty honest cheater and I can hold my hands up and say when I'm not putting in maximal effort. And I haven't been. But I also haven't minded too much either. Give 100% effort to every run on a streak and I'm pretty certain I'd be pulling muscles and pulling out before a week was up. Additionally, in running every day I am trying to find the joy in running, and to run for more than just the numbers, or the performance improvement. So yes, I may have been taking it slower, or stopping to take photos a fair bit.

But today I just felt like I wanted a run out. Not to stop any more than essential and just try and get a bit of flow going under my legs. So I checked googlemaps and decided to head back towards Battersea Park and do the segment Strava calls '2 Bridges, no Steps' - Instead of heading over the Chelsea Bridge and into the Park, I'd cross over the road to the Thamesside pavement and run the Chelsea Embankment down to Battersea Bridge, over and back up the Park side. Being the river side there would be no side roads and even the Albert Bridge that bisected this planned route can be run under instead of having to wait at the lights to cross over the road.

Once I got going I found myself able to sustain just under my natural comfortable pace without having to push too hard. I could feel I was having to keep my breathing a little more controlled than my average runch, and the I was just pushing into effort, but it felt good.

I hadn't realised that from Chelsea Bridge onto the Chelsea Embankment was actually a pretty decent down-slope. I hadn't either noticed that it's almost 1.7k in a dead straight line! Sometime I find long straights difficult to keep hacking away at and lose my pace without anything to distract me. But today it felt like a good, almost treadmill-like experience.

Taking out the unavoidable stops for traffic lights (and once to take a photo of some tourists for them!) it was close to a 5k PB. Though it felt  a bit pacey, hadn't felt like a 5k maximal effort and I wasn't wiped out. Which has got to bode well for another break of the 5k PB being not too far into the future.