One of 'those' runs - happy legs!

Last night I experienced one of 'those' runs, one that I always hope will happen when I press 'start' on my watch. It was a good run, a run where I thought "hmm, I can run". The truth of it is that after running 4 times on holiday the journey home and return to work stopped me running again for 5 days. The result of the lay off was a 'happy legs' run - 4 km of near 5 km PB pace followed by a comfortable 6 km at just over target marathon pace, followed by a recovery where my body didn't feel like it had just been smacked about with a cricket bat.

These guys have some very happy 'happy legs'
[image found on flickr posted by slalit]

The term "happy legs" is not my own it owes its origins with my physio Leon. I think he defines it as the phenomenon of setting out for a run after a rest and finding your legs want to go fast. In the settings when he has used the term it usually leads to an athlete over doing the session (for example, over cooking the first half of a marathon after a good taper period). I have in the past fallen into the overdoing it category but happily last night I sort of saw it coming, enjoyed it for what it was, and was sure to split the run into the running free bit and the big step down in pace bit.

As it turned out my feet were not all that happy this morning, but I hope to rest them a little bit now before the 3 hour long run on Sunday (my last big one before Berlin). I know this last long run is mostly about learning to handle the fatigue of the last 10 km of the 42.2 and I am hoping it will go well. The first 10km will be done during the Cardiff 10k race (my sort of marathon mass start practice) and the following couple of hours will be spent working out just what paces to think about for marathon day.

I am running two marathons in a month for DiabetesUK - support my marathon madness at https://www.justgiving.com/Berlin-Bristol-Bath