Ow (but it's still good!)

Had a "fun" run session today.  01:50 planned with 30 minutes warm up, 15 minutes at half-marathon pace, 3 minutes recovery, 15 minutes at half-marathon pace and then jog down for 45ish minutes.

So, I jogged up to the common; there's a known 15ish minute circuit I could use and it takes about 30 minutes to get there.  Perfect!  There were a few frustrations around Garmin having a fit with pacing and being a bit random in the trees, but it settled and the pacing was pretty consistent throughout and I hit my half-marathon pace nicely, but over-cooked the recovery and jog down a bit.  Still some learning to do on that for sure.

At the start of the jog down, I hit a really muddy bridleway that was peppered with horse crap.  There was a moment where I pitched into some nasty brambles, tried to jump through to save myself but ended up sliced up on my legs.  I carried on for the last 40 minutes or so, thinking it was probably just a couple of tiny prickles, and it stung a bit, but when I got home...

 
And these are the thorns I pulled out of the wounds...

Looks a bit less bad cleaned up, but sore nonetheless.

The other leg wasn't so bad as the thorns hit lower down and on the front of my leg where I had long socks on.

So I'll be in shorts for the rest of today while those close up and scab over properly.  But I was proud that I achieved the goals of today's sessions and didn't stop and have a moment when I got injured (and that it wasn't serious at all - to be fair there were a lot of trees I could have ended up head-first into rather than just sliced by some brambles).  Good run!