You know, I'm spoilt for choice when it comes to where I can run. There are numerous parks close by and even a river, it was to the river that I decided to head towards for a lunch-time run. There were no linger side effects from my previous run so I felt good to go.

I used the short walk as a warm-up and as I got to the Green I hooked everything up, making sure I had a GPS connection on my watch and the HRM was connected. I finally got the HRM working again after replacing the battery and rebooting it! Once my watch had beeped at me to tell me everything was good to go I hit the start button, and dashed across the Green heading towards the river. The path was flat and tarmacked for roughly the first 2km and then it turned to loose gravel and as it had spent the morning raining it became slightly muddy and puddles had formed, this quickly turned my run into a dodging people and puddles exercise! About half a kilometre in and I started to feel that consistent pain appear on the outside of my right calf, only this time it didn't get any worse but gradually faded as I continued running. At the 3km mark I had made it to my turning point so I rounded the tree that split the path and headed back. It was at this point I started to notice the hotspot on the ball of my right foot return. I know last time I said I'd get some decent socks and try and tape it, well, I've ordered the socks at least! Just waiting on them to arrive now. Anyway this time it took a lot longer for it to appear, I'm thinking that might be down to the terrain? It was pretty flat! And because of the flatness I think that's why I didn't start to tire till the last kilometre, whereas the run in the park was quite undulating. I could also see this in my splits, the first 4km were quite steady but then the last one just completely dropped off. The last 500m were particularly tough, although it wasn't that hot I had been running in shade most of the way, now I didn't have any, and I could feel the energy being drawn out of me by the sun!

Overall I was quite pleased with how it went, by the time I had finished my right thigh felt a bit tight though but I completed in just under 40 minutes. Now, I know at this time it's not all about the time, rather just getting the mileage under my belt, and the conditions were different but it's nice to see the times are heading in the right direction regardless.

Onwards and upwards!