Juneathon day 17: Chalfonts run

Monday: piano day. The older kids head to their piano lesson in Chalfont St Peter; I then use the next hour for a run. Today's was lovely: nice and warm, not raining, beautiful countryside.

I went for the simpler of my routes: straight up the road to Chalfont St Giles, up to the end of White Hart Close (where my oldest friend Julian lives, as it happens) and then back the same way. As well as the pleasant environment, I also like the fact that you tend to pass lots of other runners and cyclists on this route.

Today I went for a decent slug of Helen Hall and Barefoot Audio's Apollo series, part 3. I really enjoy these recordings. This one starts with a really decent warm-up to get the blood flowing through brisk walking. Then we move onto "drill" - high-cadence running but not very fast, to continue the warm-up. From this point, there is running at various high cadences from 190-200 steps per minute (whether actually moving fast or not), and then some technique advice to get moving faster without too much extra effort.

This programme, and perhaps my limited time window, meant I really hit the "runner's high". Sweet! With that to push me on, I ended up running negative splits for the whole run, with the first mile (including warm-up) slower than 12:00/mile and the last part at something like 8:20/mile. I really had to work, but it felt good. All the foam rolling is obviously helping, and my low-carb diet has definitely brought my energy back. In the end I did 5.04 miles in 47:13, which I was very happy with.

Juneathon effort: 5.04 miles in 47:13 (plus some foam rolling)