Today's run was all about quality. It didn't really feel hard, though I pushed a little bit, and Strava informs me that it was my historic seventh best effort. I would not have guessed that because my perceived effort was probably no more than a 3 throughout (easy breathing, easy talking). Without having looked at my fitness for a couple of weeks, it has maintained dead-level over the last month (0% change over 30 days).
Today's run used my watch in Satnav mode, wherein I followed the directions laid out by the course, which I had programmed into the watch the day before. The course was in turn guided by the Strava heat map of popular routes through the forest. What I actually did was looked at routes that were somewhat, but not the most, popular. In other words, passable and legible routes through the forest that allow for navigation of some lesser known copses and groves of trees. Often, but not always, these are the denser or older areas of growth, parts that haven't been harvested for some time. A couple of areas look ancient.
When I say 'forestrunning' and leave out the space I am attempting to be dialectical. The act of running and the forest, in this type of run, are inseparable. That the omission of a single space can achieve such a feat is amazing to me. There is the running. There is the forest. And then there is the running through the forest. It reminds me of my favourite Le Guin novel, The Word for World is Forest, which featured indigenous forestrunners who carried messages between the different tribes that inhabited the forest, which was under seige by logging colonists and military types.
We have these in Swinley as well, and it somewhat breaks my heart to see how much has been cut down. I don't see how it is sustainable, really, and I hope the current situation doesn't somehow give the impetus to cut faster.
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