Training: an aimless 5K through the West End

Despite grumbling to myself that "I can't be bothered" as I trudged down the stairs out of the office, I did get out for another run today. Go me. While I'd asked the random pointer for a direction today, I ignored it as it told me to go the same way that I went last time. Boring! Instead, I zigzagged this way and that until I finally settled into a stretch of straight-line running:

I genuinely had no idea where I was going to go, but avoided the worst of the gradients

In the end, Cruddas Park was the furthest point of my run. It's an area I've run through a couple of times before and it's not the most affluent, but like pretty much anywhere, it's got an interesting history. The tower blocks there even housed T. Dan Smith, the Newcastle councillor responsible for a lot of the regeneration in the 60s — including the tower blocks of Cruddas Park, in fact.

These days, you're more likely to hear of him being reviled for destroying the city's architectural heritage and replacing it with concrete, but I'm always intrigued by the era of brutalism and the grand visions people had back then. Hindsight's a wonderful thing, but at the time, it no doubt felt like Newcastle was going places.

Anyway, enough of the history lessons and philosophical and architectural musings. Today's run felt hard. I mean, who would've thought that dropping to one run every 4 or 5 days would see me lose some fitness? 🙄

To be fair, the first 2km were a steady, if not too steep, climb. My pace told that story too, with a 5:35/km followed by a 5:48/km. No chance of negative splits today, then. Thereafter, however, it picked up. The third kilometre was still, on the whole, a very slight uphill, but my pace was up to 5:16/km. The next kilometre was faster still at 5:08/km though I failed to maintain the momentum in the fifth, getting a 5:13/km pace.

But still, today was hard. And I was glad when it was over. Let's hope I'm feeling better this Saturday morning.