Running

A few pages back I wrote about wanting to get conditioned for coming back to Northumberland and running with my Dad. Well, yesterday we did the run. It was fantastic. A shade under 15km, around 500m of elevation and the longest (time-wise) run I've done by around half an hour. The route is vaguely the old 'red route' at Thrunton Woods, which my Dad does every Saturday religiously. I run on the flat in Manchester, and rarely over 8km since my first half in May. It was never going to be easy.

The run starts at the car park, winding up through trails made by mountain bikers, down onto some fire/access road and up some brutally steep climbs out of the woods and onto the moor. The going was really tough up here - windy and unbelievably boggy. Beautiful though, which helped. Another steep climb up onto the crags got us to half way, where I started to feel the tightness in my hips affecting my knees and worried a little it was going to be a 5 mile walk to the car. I tried to stay disciplined in my gait, with no overly big strides and zigzags downhill to counteract it.
We wound back down into the woods, warmth and mtb trails, watching some nutter fly down what seemed to be an insanely technical descent, eventually emerging back onto the fireroads that would take us back to the car for chocolate milk and christmas chocolates.
My Dad loves that I've taken up running and so I was really keen to give this a try for his sake, while quietly dreading the effect it might have on my volatile knees. We had a great day out that left us both pretty buzzed for a while so I thought I'd share it here. Cheers.

Strava (should be on lfgss running I think):
https://www.strava.com/activities/2951300011
Some pics:

PS time to get a car and some trail running shoes I reckon