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.

Virtual Insanity

by Russell Turner - 22:26 on 29 March 2020

All continues healthy at The Rural Retreat where self-isolation has never been a problem. If not for my blood donation and a Tesco trip on Thursday I wouldn’t have been outside the Retreat’s immediate environs all week.

Apart from runs, that is, and thanks to our rural solitude a social distance is easy to maintain. A few bicycles, a handful of cars and a couple of farmers were all I saw during today’s effort.

Today should have found Matchgirl and me in Alloa, for my third half marathon of the month, so my plan was to run the distance in a double local circuit and claim my first virtual HM medal. Unfortunately, keen to replicate something close to my Inverness HM pace I overlooked that there was twice as much climb in the second mile (all contained in one-third of it) then maintained a silly speed on the next three miles of flat and gentle downhill, although by then I knew this wasn’t a day for 13.1 miles. The silly speed was to make the most of a new 10k target.

I ran out of mental strength in Mile 6, when I took a couple of 30sec walk breaks, which I paid for by finishing the 10k in seven seconds over 56 minutes – if I’d kept running I’d have finished in the 55-minute zone. Not being among a crowd of other runners really does make a difference, or maybe I could blame a lack of blood, which my body will not yet have fully replaced. However, I knocked more than a minute off my previous best and earned my fourth PB of the month so can’t complain too much.

I’ll stick to my training plan for the next three long runs – sensibly paced 8, 10 and 10 miles – before the virtual half marathon planned for what would have been Shakespeare HM (and London Marathon) weekend on April 26.

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