"6 miles of steady. If it's going to take more than an hour carry a drink - apple juice mixed 50/50 with water. Have something like oats mixed with greek yoghurt and acacia honey fot breakfast, with a cup of tea (assuming you'll run in the morning?)"
Ha ha ha. Assuming I'll run in the morning. What Sal doesn't realise is that in order to "make time for training", I made the important decision to not drop a single one of my social activities. Which means that I'm officially going madder than a March hare. (When Rebecca, Keith and I worked together, we used to be the Dormouse, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. Rebecca loved her duvet, Keith wore the hat, and I'm just March hare-like. Keith doesn't know this). For example, I don't have a "free weekend" between now and September. But that's fine. I've checked, and training while I'm wherever I'll be should still be possible. Hopefully. So, this weekend, for example, I was at a Hen party in Lewes and Brighton. And very relieved to be having a rest day on Saturday, although my goodness, we had the hills - it would have been the place to do hill training. My peroneal tendon (OK, I'll admit it, I'm just proud of knowing the word) moaned about walking up them on its rest day.
So today, being the day for a long slow run, I had figured out that recovery from last night was needed first. I'm glad Sal is sage enough not to try and stop me from drinking tea in the morning, even if she seriously thought I was going to go running then. In fact, I only got back to Peterborough at around lunchtime and did not go running until after a short trip to Central Park to indulge in some poetry. Sadly I missed being able to perform with Mr Pete Cardinal Cox, because his slot turned out to be before I was able to get back. But I showed up to hear the lovely and talented MC Mixy doing his stuff. At around this time, however, the clouds became so threatening that I realised I was supposed to be running. "Look, it's going to rain", I told Jessa, "I'd better go". She mistook my meaning: "Oh we'll be OK, I'm sure we won't get too wet". "No," I explained "it must be time for my run, it's going to rain".
In the event, I was remarkably lucky, and it didn't rain at all. Nigel had already warned me about the 50/50 apple juice, although he said "with a pinch of salt". This clearly wasn't in the instructions, and I told him so. "It will be", he said confidently. It is - for next week. I like to review the week ahead, and sure enough, Sal was easing me in slowly again. Running with a bottle was interesting. I'd had the idea to bring one that was given to me recently by lovely Russ and Sunny at their wedding in upstate New York, although I'd overlooked the fact that it didn't have a squeezy, easy-to-drink-on-the-move top (nipple, as my dad says - he's convinced it's Freudian and everyone is seeking out these water bottles with a psychological purpose. I don't suppose he's ever tried drinking apple juice mixed with water while running, though). Still, with a little practice, it is possible to not pour it down your front.
Another difficulty about the bottle, though, was that I quickly got a tired forearm. I switched arms frequently to counter this, but going up the side of the rowing lake, when I had half the bottle left, it developed into a mildly unappetising, frothy, warm, diluted apple juice drink, as I'd been giving it a good shake as I picked up the pace during a good song. This made me realise that joggers generally should take up the useful function of butter manufacture. What we need, you see, is to even out the weight of the bottle in one hand, by carrying something in the other hand. I don't know how many of you, as kids, used to get the cream off the top of the milk bottle, and put it in a jar and shake it (I had a lot of resistance from my dad, who liked the cream for his coffee), but with a lot of persistence, you do eventually get butter. So... you can see where I'm going with this: runners are ideally placed to produce butter. The only thing I can't quite sort out is how to even out the weight of the milk, as you drink the water. So maybe not. Another brilliant idea foiled.
Well, I know that I'm deflecting the real interest of the weekend, which is, what happened at the hen night? I'm sure it piques the curiosity of several, but of course, I can't reveal that, it is a carefully guarded secret, (usually right up until the hens, in their sequined cowboy hats, nurse outfits or veils and Ls, vomit over a bouncer's foot); although in point of fact, our evening in Brighton was much more sedate than that, boasting no embarrassing matching outfits (thankfully) and a splendid meal in the famous "Food for Friends" restaurant, which certainly lived up to its reputation for being vegetarian. No, it was also sumptuous. We enjoyed some cocktails (I was on the margaritas) and played an entertaining game of "I never," where you take a drink if the statement is untrue for you: easily the most exciting statement being "I never had a threesome". I can't divulge who drank during that statement, although can reveal that alcohol was consumed. However, this morphed into a game I'm going to call "Sacrifice" which involved making an impossible choice, which started with the innocuous but tough "If you had to give up one of these for the rest of your life, would you choose Gin or Chocolate?". This developed to individual tests - would Jenny prefer to put up with misplaced apostrophe's or, commas? Would I prefer to give up drama or poetry? But the real humdinger of the evening, posed, I believe, by Sarah (and this just shows that us girls do talk politics) "If you had to, would you snog David Cameron or George W (with tongues)?
This didn't get an answer. I'll leave it up to you to speculate on whether the reason was that no one couldn't stomach either notion, or that it was at this point that the stripper showed up. Either way, it was still eating at me this afternoon, as I poured diluted apple juice into my mouth, and sweated out tequila, on my 6 mile run. However, it struck me as a suitable topic for a poem. I'm on the hunt for an impressive subject, because hypothetically, I might want to impress upon my audience how impressively I can write poetry, as compared with, say, an 8 year old, at Pint of Poetry in Charters this Wednesday. And while I still haven't written the poem about how matching underwear makes you sexier, it's going to have to wait another month as I fear it may lack the necessary sophistication.
It was a good run, in all. I felt rather clever for managing my time so well, and even getting poetical inspiration at the same time. Who knows, if the poem goes well, I might post it too.
No comments:
Post a Comment