Thus dawns a new week, a week hopefully of dryness and me
not dying whilst running. So far I can claim a big positive on both fronts, as
you may be able to tell since I am able to write this, suggesting that I am
both alive and not so soggy that I cause the internal workings of my laptop to
break.
All this week, the running plan is simple in theory –
just 25 minutes straight running. And signs are good for the first run of the
week, in that I was able to finish without too much suffering. The final five
minutes, once again, did cause me to slow down quite a bit, but I was surprised
at how OK I was feeling even after 15 minutes or so; the occasional small
stitch but nothing that would slow me down unduly.
A small concern at the moment is the distance being
travelled – both today and Friday, I managed to run 2.4 miles (or 3.8km if you’re
more of a metric person) in 25 minutes, which doesn’t quite extend to 5km in
the allocated 30 minutes, unless those final five minutes involve one of those
boosts that you can get in Mario Kart that make you a lot faster than everybody
else because you’re way back in last place and really need it. I’m not overly
worried at the moment, though, I think this is supposed to be a time of
building up stamina and getting through the time, and once that’s a bit more
settled hopefully it’ll be easier to go faster.
We’re back to one podcast per week which means I get to
experience Laura in my ears twice more saying exactly the same thing. This
time, though, she really didn’t say too much at all – at one point I was
starting to get quite worried about her. She’d checked in to tell me that I’d
run for 5 minutes, and then there was a long period of conspicuous silence. I
was starting to get worried about her – maybe she’d got lost? Maybe she’d
actually been running and not come back? Turns out it was neither of these
things, it was just a long wait between the 5 minute mark and the 12½ minute
mark. And by wait I mean run.
When she came back, though, she made quite an entrance,
telling me that I should build stamina by “getting as many kilometres under my
belt as possible”. Now I took exception to this – I may have gone up a belt
notch or two in the past year, but I certainly haven’t put a whole kilometre
on!
The race opportunity of the day came at about the 15
minute mark, when I was overtaken by a relatively sedate cyclist, who couldn’t
have been going more than a mile an hour or so faster than me. Part of my brain
suggested that it might be a good idea to let him be my pace-setter. The rest
of my brain overruled it, suggesting that that might lead to me also getting a
pacemaker. So I let him cycle off into the sunrise and focused on putting one
foot in front of the other (although the foot that I put in front of the other
foot kept changing – if this wasn’t the case then this might explain the slow
speed).
I managed to finish today, which I’m counting as a win.
And, as an extra bonus now that I’m “officially a runner” is that I now have my
first running blister! I shall wear it as an uncomfortable badge of honour. I
reckon it’s probably because of the shoes that I run in, which I think are
giving up the ghost. By that, I mean that they died a very long time ago, so
long that even the ghost that used to haunt them has decided it’s not really
worth it any more.
If any local businesses (or come to that, international
businesses) are reading and want to buy me a new pair of running shoes, I would
be happy to offer you some free advertising in return. After all, I have
literally some readers now!
Bliz Turley (a combination of blister and Liz Hurley,
expressed in such a way as to make neither of those sentiments clear and
instead make her sound like an alien from Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy)
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