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.
The Worst Is Yet To Come
by Russell Turner - 19:16 on 15 January 2018
Matchgirl’s cheery warning when I appear over-confident about my marathon prospects is: “You don’t know how far it is.”
Obviously, I do – it’s 26.2 miles – but I know what she means: until I’ve completed a marathon I’ll have no comprehension of how much effort, mental and physical, is involved in covering the distance. Today, I began to get an inkling.
This morning’s session was 80 minutes, at least 50 of them running. The schedule encourages its users to reduce walk breaks if they’re up to it. Or think they are. A week earlier I’d run 50 minutes out of 65, and finished feeling good, so I was confident I could run two sets of 30 minutes, especially after a brisk 10-minute warm-up walk.
I did, almost, finishing my second 30 after 29 minutes because I’d covered the 10k distance (6.2 miles) and walking the last few minutes to register 6.6 miles (a new distance best) in the required 80 minutes. But it was tough going. The ice had unfrozen, there was no rain and only a slight breeze, yet it was a slog.
I blame the humidity, which Garmin told me was 100%. This would explain why the air felt so heavy. And why there was a brief but violent hail shower, fortunately after I’d returned to The Rural Retreat. I’d associated humidity with just warm air; I now know better.
The big positive from today is that, despite the conditions, at no point was I was tempted to stop running (even though that would not have been A Bad Thing). Speed may be a distant dream but my endurance continues to grow, which is just as well. After all, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Moggy Update: As has been reported before, the shelf above the radiator near the door is the perch of choice for all three members of The Pride, combining as it does maximum warmth with clear sightlines to the kitchen. Fisticuffs sometimes take place when one member feels another has hogged top spot too long. Peaceful co-existence is rare for two cats, let alone three, so the harmony displayed today (which lasted at least three minutes) has never been seen before and may never be repeated.
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