Happily Ever After

Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running

Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.

Counting Down To Florence

by Russell Turner - 14:30 on 19 November 2017

Almost there. The winter Chatterbox is nearly finished – the last bits will be done tomorrow, well in time to download it to the printer before Matchgirl and I leave for foreign parts – and yesterday’s two sets of 15-minute runs were satisfactory. I even speeded up for the final two minutes to a pace approaching the one at which Matchgirl will run the entire Florence Marathon. All progress is all relative.

Sometime tomorrow (I’m undecided about morning or afternoon) I’ll make my valedictory Virgin couch to 5k run: an unbroken 30 minutes. At my present modest pace (which Matchgirl is still concerned may be a little fast) 30 minutes is unlikely to be enough to cover 5k, so a few minutes may be added so I can complete the distance at a run. For possibly the first time in my life. I’m sure that even Cathy the Runner wouldn’t begrudge me that.

By then I should have recovered from last night’s City Limits exertion, which got me home at 3am after another good night at Johnny Foxes. That’s why the 16-week schedule (which begins in only six weeks!) that ends with the London Marathon will be run by me on Wednesdays, Fridays and Mondays rather than the more traditional Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Motivation might be lacking after a late night being a rock star.

All being well, by this time next week the Florence Marathon will be over and Matchgirl will be exalting about a finish time she considers respectable. She’s her own worst critic. And I’ll have become an international runner the day before by joining the group she’s involved with in a fact-finding trot over the last two miles of the course. Everyone will be taking it easy ahead of race day, so I might be able to keep up.

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