So after only doing recovery runs and the odd orienteering race for 2 months amongst lots of cycling I decided it was time to take my Achilles out for a proper focused training run. I was excited to get out to Whitford Forest straight after work in East Tamaki to find some hills to hit up. Unfortunately I forgot to print out the map before I left work so I had no idea where I was going to end up but this has not been a problem in the past.
After 45 minutes of pushing quite hard I decided it was time to start heading back to the car but after 70 minutes of heading back in what I thought was the right direction I realised I had stuffed something up. There were some really nice views from the tracks and forest roads I was running on for this last half so I knew what direction I was heading but everything was not ok as by this stage I should have hit the road which I ran in on. Hitting the edge of the forest totally blew my mind because I was a very long way from the car but at least I knew where I was.
So how does this happen? Here it is in simplified form and again with my approximate GPS route.
So I boosted 8km back across some farms to my car. I ended doing 21.4km with 800m elevation gain in 1:41 which gives a pace of 4:42 mins/km. Pretty happy with my form going into Auckland Champs but that was a bit too long for a run 4 days out from race day. My Achilles also felt fine for the whole run!