Pins & Needles: Weekend run with pictures

So the weekend has rocked around again and I had to do a 12km run. It was weighing heavily on my mind as I have had a sore butt muscle since Friday night. I ended up ditching the Saturday morning run, turned the alarm off this morning too. I'm okay if I'm up and moving around, it's just going from sitting to standing which is painful. So basically I should just never sit down right?

During this morning I remembered something a running friend mentioned on our running facebook site, that the pain of not doing the run would have been worse than the pain of the run itself, or words to that effect.

So at just after 11.30 this morning I got myself ready to go out. I knew it would end up being a walk/run/walk/run and I was fine with that. I just needed to get the kms in my legs, only 62 days till the half marathon! Eeek. I figured if I do my usual run around the streets of town it's too easy to take a shortcut home and call the run short, so I decided I would just run straight out of town 6km and then turn and run all the way back in. Shades of Forrest Gump there huh?

I did however tell Mike to keep his mobile phone handy in case I broke down along the way and needed him to come pick me up.

The map here is crazy, you can see I left the township of Mortlake and just kept running, even past the salt flats. I actually wasn't sure where 6km was going to take me and I was praying as I ran that Runkeeper would hurry up and tell me it had arrived! Only a few trucks passed me which meant I had to get way over in the verge so I didn't get knocked off my feet with the back draft as they drove past. And the odd car that went past made sure they gave me a wide berth as I got off the road for them also, running against the traffic.

It was hot out there, and well when you think about it, I was running in the heat of the day, doh! I was just so glad to be moving and pain free. What's a run without a selfie though! You can see the road stretched out behind me, this was as I was making my way back into town.

A view across part of the salt flats over to Mount Shadwell, heck I was a long way from town! And it's so dry and dusty, but thank goodness I remembered the Nature's Botanical. That stuff is amazing, although heaps of flies around, they just don't bother you when you have this dabbed on you.

And as part of this run, the first 5km was going to be my 5km Feb run for the Licorice & Olives Race series. They had asked this month to take a photo during our run, well I had a few to pick from didn't I? But this is the one I chose. The sky was such a beautiful colour, honestly if you could bottle it, you'd make a fortune.

And I've often driven past the old Butter Factory at the edge of town, but never stopped to take a photo as it is on a sweeping bend and nowhere to park. It's a ramshackle old building falling down (but I think the hysterical ... err ... historical society don't give them permission to pull it down) and it often has cacti blooming in the front which just looks so out of place. So I had to stop and take a pic as I ran on by.

Some post run stretches and then it was nap central in this house. I ended up having a delicious hour long nap on the bed, Mike fell asleep on the couch in his usual possie, and Lucky loves to get wedged between him and the arm of the couch, he hangs with his head over the side (can we say blood rush!) and pops his paw up on Mike's leg. Funny boy.