Today I upped the distance, targeting 8 miles. I was meeting a friend in the Queen Elizabeth Park and we agreed 3 miles, so I decided to run to Stratford to make up the difference. Totalled 9 miles instead.

It was my second time training under a low heart rate. After reading my fellow skater and blogger Van's article on this topic I used the 180-formula he mentions. 180 minus your age and that's what your heart should be aiming to stick to. From what I understand training my heart in this way should improve my speed in the long term as my heart and body gets used to this consistent pace, lower instensity should keep you in a nice threshold to continue training on a more frequent basis and should be less prone to injury. I won't go into any more details on this as I won't be able to explain it as well as Van. (I need to re-read it myself, there's a lot to take in).
          For me this was quite difficult to stick to, I'm all too tempted to sprint up a flight of stairs or dash across the road as soon as it's green. However I do notice I'm less exhausted as the exercise intensity is much less. As a result it took over ten minutes longer to complete 5 miles than my usual time. 

That's the science out of the way. Neverland....
As we were running around the Olympic Park we noticed a few more playground areas we hadn't seen before. It included rope constructions, things to swing across monkey style and slanted walls which are about the same size and angle of the ones I've come across in OCR events. I do particularly like the playground made out of tree branches which would keep any adult feeling young again.

Super muddy course so I gave up filming after halfway around the course as I ran out of clean spots on my shirt. Therefore in the video there are quite a few bigger obstacles missing such as the water slide.

Our friend Theresa got us involved in OCR events but unfortunately she could not make it. By coincidence it was also her birthday so we dedicate this video to our muddy matriarch. (Her favourite animal is a dolphin).