Here's some pain!

One great blessing God has given us is to live in the beautiful Rift Valley, running through our part of Kenya. The stress fracture in my foot seems to have healed now, but my attempts to do some running again have been thwarted by circumstances in the last 10 days. To catch up a little, I decided to try to run the first 7 miles home after teaching at Bible college yesterday.

Take a look at this elevation profile of the run...



That's just over a mile of continuous and steep uphill in mile 3 (380 foot gain, so average about 1 in 14), and then 2.5 miles of non-stop uphill at the end.

That hurt! I was so dozy after a day's teaching I just assumed in the first couple of miles that I must be getting a lot fitter rather than attributing it to the continual downhill which I'd not registered.... if I've ever run a more painful mile than mile 3, I can't remember it. Wow. It was also the slowest mile I've ever run, taking the title by a whopping 21 seconds - but miles 6 took the crown not much later, and mile 7 joined it amongst slowest ever miles 1, 2 and 3! (Though I was running with my work bag slung over my shoulder and the terrain was terrible because it had bucketed it down). But the feeling of satisfaction when my watch told me I'd completed the 7 miles was immense! When I saw that hill coming at about 4.5 miles I thought it was without a doubt all over, but a most welcome rush of endorphins arrived and got me through! I hope the person on the matatu (Kenyan minibus taxi) didn't mind me too much... but if you can't tolerate smelly people you wouldn't be on matatus...