Today, at last, I got back into the swing of this running lark. It's taken a while, and for most of today's run it didn't feel possible, but at last I seem to have got my mojo back - or something approximating to it anyhow. I don't mind admitting that at first I felt terrible. Seriously. In all sorts of places I felt tight and uncomfortable to the extent that I wondered whether I could stand an hour of running; like always though I just stuck at it to see what would happen and in the end a couple of unexpected events occurred.
The first of these (and if you're eating you should probably look away now) was that by the time we'd made our way down to Regents Park - the halfway point more or less - my guts were rebelling. Ordinarily I'd tough it out (see above) but a voice in the back of my head told me that this wasn't an option and so I put in a little sprint to get me to the nearest toilet. What blessed relief and thanks go out to all the owners of public toilets everywhere. You all deserve medals. With that little job out of the way I felt perky enough as we slogged our way up the steep side of Primrose Hill:
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| A view like that don't come for free! |
Even so I wasn't quite sure how my legs were going to cope with the long drag up to the car park and this remained a source of concern with strong runners like Craig, Daniel, Jo and Mike in the vicinity. So I hung back a little until Rosslyn Hill where I thought it worth lifting the pace a touch to see what would happen - which was that Daniel and Jo stayed close on my heels! So I tried another dig and suddenly I had a gap of 5 or 10 metres and the desire to defend my slender advantage. By sheer will I kept my pursuers at bay all of the way and it felt good, it really did, to glimpse my old form. There's a friend that I hope to welcome back!
Distance: 7.2 miles
Time: 1h 02m 49s