August 21, 2007 at 10:05 pm
· Filed under Running
Today was a day for making amends for last weeks limp lettuce training efforts.
I had a fairly heroic route in mind but given that it took me over an hour after the garmin had locked on to my window ledge accessible satellites, to actually push myself out of the door, I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t cop out at an early stage. The plan was to make an additional bridge extension (Kew Bridge) to last weeks 10-miler but the trouble with that, is it would end up looping back past my house within the first 6k – pretty dangerous. Luckily I had transferred the omnibus edition of the Archers to my iPod and the everyday tales of country folk kept me busy up to the psychological safety of Hammersmith Bridge.
I was struggling at Putney Bridge and audibly huffing and puffing as I passed the crowds at the bus stops. I’m normally fairly happy when I’m out on a run and manage to save the grumbling til I make it home but today I was seriously arsey. By 17k I was suffering, and the groans increased in intensity as my calf seized up. I had to stop for a bit to massage the knot away and then I tried to walk a bit to stretch it out, but I was in that zone where walking is about 20 times more painful than continuing with the run so I had to start shuffling again.
I’d just starting running and grumbling again when I spotted John running towards to me. He was off on a reccy of the 10 mile loop I blogged about last week and that gave me a boost for about 30 secs.
I didn’t know quite how far this run was going to be but I reckoned on close to 13 miles. I wanted the boost of having completed the half marathon distance before I trek up to Newcastle but I also wanted it to be over right NOW! Finally approached home with the garmin reading 20.3 km, I needed 700 metres more to make it a half marathon. Strangely my local Stella shop is precisely 700 metres away. However, I am strong – teetotal strong and I resisted the lure, choosing instead to head upstairs to roll around groaning on the floor. This teetotal malarky is going to be tough.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Related posts
Permalink
jogblog wrote @ August 21st, 2007 at 10:12 pm
What’s with the teetotal thing? Eek. Although I seemed to have pledged to give up drinking during October. Um, eek.
I think I only really committed to be teetotal for today, with a vague suggestion that I may try and resist too much temptation up til the big day.
Still a tough call though!
celeste wrote @ August 22nd, 2007 at 2:52 am
Wow! Great run! Super dooper!!! It looks VERY impressive on your picture!
Steve wrote @ August 23rd, 2007 at 12:25 am
Good effort. I notice you mix imperial with metrics. Why don’t you set your Garmin to miles. Or rather than refer to 13 miles, why not refer to 21 km that sounds further.
Don’t those Garmin things have like a 2 meter margin of error? I’m sure you crossed the street enough to make up for those final 700m. No, I’m positive.
CONGRATULATIONS! It’s in the bag. You are definitely going to kick ass. I hope you did some hardcore recovery with some delivered-to-your-door Stella.
PS Yeah, I did Big Sur. It was pretty but there ain’t no scenery pretty enough to make up for the pain of a hilly marathon! You’ll get there someday, I promise. Just don’t think about what the pain is going to be like and you’ll be fine!
gecko wrote @ August 23rd, 2007 at 7:09 am
I’m curious…. you wrote “…Luckily I had transferred the omnibus edition of the Archers to my iPod and the everyday tales of country folk kept me busy…”. I LOVE the Archers and would do anything to have them on my ipod, but I’ve checked the Beeb’s site and there isn’t an Archers podcast! Is this some sneaky software stuff?
Nice blog, by the way. I’ve only recently started to read but am hooked!
gecko
I have my garmin in km’s because a mile is just too darn far, I get a little lap beep every 1000 m and that keeps me happy, I also don’t have to run as far to get a nice even number. I flick into imperial because no one has a flippin clue how far a km is around here.
As for mp3 Archers, I’ve been hunting around for donkeys as well but to no avail, so I’ve opted for the rather expensive solution. I upgraded my broken radio to a Pure Evoke 3 DAB version. This has an SD card which enables me to set the radio to record anything I like. I set it to record the omnibus every Sunday and then I transfer the recording to iTunes, have it convert the file to mp3 and way to go! A bit of a palaver but it saves me missing my soap.
kathy wrote @ August 23rd, 2007 at 1:25 pm
I don’t know what’s more impressive – your run or your Archers transfer.
Great effort … you’re going to ace this half marathon.
XFR Bear wrote @ August 23rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Fab run – well done you!
You’ll do GNR no probs 
HTML-Tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
