After a late night involving copious amounts of food and drink there was no danger of me going for a run this morning. Instead I opted for an afternoon “homing pigeon” run.
We’ve been meaning to pick up some tomato plants and a chilli plant for ages so we decided to head across to Burford Garden Centre. That also meant we could get some goodies for lunch too. It also gave me the opportunity to combine the outing with a run.
Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to do laps of the garden centre. No, I would help The Wife select the appropriate plants and food and then bid farewell: her returning home in the car and me, like a homing pigeon, returning under my own steam.
I’ve done a few “homing pigeon” runs before and I actually quite like them. There’s something slightly more exciting about making your own way home from somewhere, rather than running a lopp or out-and-back.
The great thing about the route home from Burford is that there are lots of different options.
The busy main road is the shortest route but a no-no given that there are no paths. I also precluded the river footpath today as it is often water logged and after heavy overnight rain showers I thought better of getting dirty. That still left a myriad of country lane options, all of which would be almost traffic free and all suitably picturesque, if not a touch hilly!
The weather was dry and cool which made the 8 miles very comfortable compared to the heat of yesterday. I did pretty well at keeping the heart rate down for most of the run. The hills obviously had an impact but I was happy with the long(ish) slow run. I’m not training for long distances at the moment but I want to keep a certain amount of fat-burning training going so that when I pick up training for the Oxford Half later in the year I’ve kept a decent base.
Run, Rest, Repeat 