Today instead of using my daysack with three 5kg disks to make up the weight I packed my old military bergen with clothes that we were going to donate to a charity, sorry Barnardo's you'll have to wait until July. The bergen packed with the clothes weighs 15.3kg. I cannot believe how much easier it is running with a proper bergen instead of a daysack with no hip belt and the weights banging against my spine!
The run I did today was through local woods with some relatively steep climbs, covering a total distance of 4.13 miles and having a total elevation gain of 449ft. I managed to do this in 52 minutes 38 seconds, though I did have to walk some parts of it. The part where I walked was the steep hill marked in blue on the elevation profile shown below. I ran as much as I could but couldn't manage it all so I walked about 50 yards ran again until I couldn't, then walked about 50 yards again and so on.
I did have one big upset on this run. My faithful old ankle weights which I bought in 1989 and have been on my ankles for about 75% of my runs since then finally gave up today and one of the cells split. I may continue to use them but I'll have to empty one of the cells on the other ankle weight to make it even. I was thinking of increasing the weight on my ankles instead of reducing it!