19 Miles after 3Wks Out

I'm finally running again. I went to the gym on Tuesday and did an hour on an elliptical trainer and then went back on Thursday with the intention of trying out a treadmill to see if that cushioned my ribs sufficiently for a run. It didn't and I was frightened that the pain would be doing me damage so I did an hour on a bike instead. So I was able to do a good bit of CV work this week but it's no substitute for running. Still concerned about the pain the impact of running was giving me, I called my osteopath on Friday for some reassurance. She agreed to squeeze me in at the end of the day for another check. The upshot of that was that it's ok to run on the pain I'm experiencing. I won't be doing any further damage but I could still be feeling it for another couple of weeks. With this confidence I did Parkrun on Saturday morning. I started slowly but as I got into it the pain eased as my osteopath said it would and I was able to lengthen my stride and finish at a good pace. Happy I was running again I needed to get a good long run in today. Having had three weeks out from running I decided not to take the balls out and just get a solid 19 miles in the bank this morning. Of course this Sunday was Mother's Day so I had to drag one child out of bed and the other away from his Xbox to give Tara her presents and breakfast in bed. Following that I had to spend all morning unblocking the kitchen sink which involved emptying out cupboards, removing the dishwasher and washing machine and ultimately took a good couple of hours to fix.
Finally at 13:00 I got out of the house to run. It was very sunny today. A nice spring day but too warm for my liking (for running in anyway) but if it can do this in March it could certainly be like this in April. Personally I'm hoping for a traditional grey London day on 23rd April.
I did three loops local to my house so I wasn't too far from home if anything went wrong. It took me 02:52:00 to do 19 miles and I was barely out of breath at the end but my legs were not too happy about it. I need to whip them into shape in the coming week. They need to wake up and understand we're not done yet!
I think I saw three fellow PWRs whilst out today, who tooted, waved and pretended to dribble basketballs respectively. It does give me a little boost.
Next Sunday is my last long run at Bluewater that I'll be doing with the balls. A couple of Petts Wood Runners are coming with me and I'm going to have to get up at 4am for the 05:30 start so this week I'm going to try to get to bed earlier and get up earlier to adjust my body clock a bit so that 4am on Sunday is less of a shock.
I got my Final Instructions magazine and notification of my running number from VMLM this week. My running number is 55748 which indicates I should be at the Red Start but after a quick exchange of emails with my VMLM contact he was able to confirm that I will be moved to the Green Start. I'm not sure if that means I will get a different number but I should be getting another letter about it soon.
Now it's lighter in the evenings I should be able to get out into the park after work to do some ball skills which is relaxing after a day of looking after other people's children, and of course, this Friday I'm in Runner's World!

Hot & sunny today (the weather, not me)