The first lap

The bridge run is tomorrow, so I adopted a 'kill or cure' strategy. Reasoning that if I couldn't manage the 8.5 km lap of the lakes today, I would hardly be able to complete a half marathon tomorrow, I did a long warm up, took the usual exit precautions, and commenced a slow circuit.

At this point I should introduce the lakes properly:

The right hand end is roughly speaking the northern end; I live a couple of blocks inland from that end, so that if there was a sixth lake inline with the others, my flat would be in it. According to www.map24.dk , I have about 350metres each way to the north-western corner.

Instead of doing a straightforward lap, I run all around all of the lakes. There is a difference – as there are underpasses under the bridges only at their western ends – and for the 2 southernmost bridges, there are not even underpasses, only reasonably easy road crossings. So from the north western corner of the first lake, I run clockwise around it and complete 3 of the 4 sides, then go under the road to the second lake, do three sides of that, and so on to the end. I then come straight back along the western side. This gives a total distance of about 8.5km, with only one road crossing where it is usually necessary to stop – the 2^nd bridge from the southern end.

It was a perfect evening for a run, not so hot as it has been recently, but sunny and with very little wind. Being a Friday evening, there were fewer people than during the week, which suited my test run nicely. I usually rise to the challenge and try to overtake any runner I see in front; it was good not to have that temptation today. All started well. I did not feel a thing until the second lake, and from there on, off and on, I was only aware of a slight stiffness in my left leg. This was far from the ‘gunshot wound’ which signalled the injury in the first place. Taking it gently and with shorter strides than my usual loping style, it was my first complete lap of the lakes since 2^nd May, and my first run of any length at all since 16^th May.

Life is good. I stretched out a little along the final straight and got home in about 40 minutes. I usually do somewhere between 30 and 35, but as the point of this run was merely to see if it was possible, I was pleased.

Sitting here a couple of hours later, my leg is slightly stiff but not seriously so. I’ll sleep on it and see how things are in the morning. Hopefully I will run to Sweden in the afternoon!