A gentle run around South Norwood: 4.6km

SATURDAY 17th MAY - 4.00pm
Distance: 4.69km
Time: 33:03
Average pace: 7.03 min/km
Route: South Norwood/Selhurst
Music: A pop potion involving Beyonce, Lily Allen and Jessie J

It's finally starting to warm up in London. The weather is glorious - which means the sun has been shining for at least two days with no sign of rain. Of course, with sun comes heat and today was some of the more humid, hot conditions in which I've run recently.

I quit running more or less over the winter, because it was Far Too Cold, but since I started back up on a regular basis since February(ish), the weather has been quite pleasant. Running in mild weather, running in rain, running in cool breezes - all of these things are pretty perfect. Running in freezing cold clearly doesn't agree with me, although I expect this will change this year as I'm 100% more motivated about my running than I was in Winter 2013.

This leads me into the idea of running in warm and humid weather. This is basically a round about way of saying that today's run was a little tougher than I'd have liked it to be. It was my first run since my ah-may-zing 10k defeat of Victoria Park (thanks again, We Own the Night), and I've been suffering a bit of a backache since which I'm putting down to a pretty full on exercise session followed by no warm-down. Silly.

I decided to just do a relaxing 4-5km route today around my local area, and actually switched the order of the run I did a couple of weeks that involved a PAINFUL uphill stretch. It's actually a very simple run the other way around and the incline in the reverse direction is much subtler. So I had a great start to the run, smugly trotting downhill with ease, the dulcet tones of Lily Allen (I am enjoying her new album!) in my ears. Then I started to feel the temperature affecting me; the air is very warm and still and it doesn't suit me when running so it would seem.

So I'm not thrilled with my average pace, but I will put that down to heat and being a  little out of practice since last weekend. Also, I had eaten some brownies about an hour beforehand... so sue me. :)

This week I'll be planning to do about three runs, so there will be more updates on the blog, and hopefully I can start thinking about progressing and building up my speed a bit, too. My goal now is to work on improving my running, now that I'm more comfortable with long distances.

Oh and- in two weekends - it's the Colour Run! Woohoo! 5km and lots of paint... I'm excited.