Last Thursday and yesterday I ran this route along Slapton Ley for the first time, clocking up a surprising 6.1k, according to my pedometer.

Yesterday’s run was by far the harder of the two on this stretch.  I don’t know if this was because I hadn’t run for two days, had drunk a couple of glasses of red wine the night before or simply because I was feeling particularly tired but it was the first time I was running along and having to talk myself into carrying on.  It didn’t help that I did something incredibly stupid when I was stretching after my warm-up first k.  See, I love this run along the Ley BUT I have to drive to get there, which means aside from my water bottle I have to carry my car keys and 7 million key rings in the other hand.  I put my left foot up behind me to stretch my quad and instead of grabbing the foot with my left hand, which was holding my keys, I grabbed it with my right.  OW!!!  It felt like I’d literally ripped the muscle in half!

My first thought was that I wouldn’t be able to walk back to the car let alone finish my run.  But then I remembered the phrase ‘run it off’ when football players get all twisted up on the pitch so I stretched the muscle again (OOOOOOW!) and lolloped away.  After a few hundred metres, it was only giving me the occasional twinge and today it’s fine so, thank goodness, lesson learned and no harm done.

It IS a gorgeous run though, and it combats the problems I was having with the fiendishly steep hills in my town as it is a mainly flat stretch.  When I can go a little further (I’m hoping to do 6.5 tomorrow and be up to 7/7.5 by the end of this week) I will perhaps park at the other end and carry on along the Strete coast path.

I never realised how much more fun it is to run a new route…  I think to avoid feeling the same sinking I’m-not-having-fun-anymore feeling I had yesterday I’m going to try and come up with a new route every week.  The challenge will be accommodating the increases to my distances, and trying to find new circular routes so I don’t have to double back all the time.  Game on.