Wet and Windy wk3 Wednesday 21st October

Autumn is finally here. I might still be sleeping under my summer duvet but outside it was wet and windy. The single speed winter bike came out for the first time since March.
The schedule today asked for a 12-16 mile run depending upon how I felt. It does seem rather a long way to run in the middle of a recovery week, but I'm not going to argue and at least there wasn't a target pace set.
To fit the run in around work I opted to do the run as my means of getting home. I worked through lunch so as to be able to sneak off a little earlier and started running at 16:50. Was hoping to be able to get the run in before it got dark, but with the days being well and truely drawn in ahead of the end of British Summer Time at the weekend I wasn't too optimistic. It was also drizzling.
I'd plotted a route that google maps reckoned was 17 miles, but that was sending me off route at times because it didn't know of a couple of foot paths but also because it wanted me to run down the Newmarket road passed the slip road down to the Eaton lights that I wanted to head down and continue to a roundabout, turn round it come back up the Newmarket road and then take Colney Road to then get into Eaton. Route turned out to be 14.2miles and took just over 2 hours. As you can see from the profile included on the heart rate trace it wasn't flat. Something like 256m (840ft) of uphill. Legs felt heavy most of the day before the run. Felt good for the first mile or so but still heavy and then whinged a little for the rest of the run.
I was well prepared though for the conditions. I used again the Innov8 bum bag with horizontal drinks system, Ron Hill lycra shorts, Ron Hill long sleeve top, Ron Hill gilet, Ron Hill reflective vest and Pretzl head torch with rear light all sourced from Cotsworld Outdoor and sold to me by Andy Bolden (Roo). On my feet I had a pair of Saucony Grid Rides with foxriver socks that Pete Johnson of the Runners Centre sold me. As the drizzle had become rain there was a lot of standing and flowing water on the roads. I got wet. My main observations were 1) when it's raining hard and when your breath is condensing you actually see better in the dark without the head torch but people can't see you so well 2) without the headtorch you don't see the branches blown into the smaller roads and 3) either with or without the headtorch its amazing how many puddles your feet find.