Behind the times

I apologise that once again, I'm playing catch-up with events. Be not afeared, I haven't quit yet. I blame it on, you know, this blog being quite light-hearted in tone, and yet my sentiments not being that light-hearted as I'm carrying the sorrow of my friend dying, and all that surrounds that. Or, I'm just lazy. Either way.

So the pinnacle of Week 2 was undoubtedly the Sunday, which was running 19 miles. Let me tell you, nineteen miles is a long way. I speak from personal experience. I was a bit afraid, when I saw my splits (wanna see my splits? Go ahead. you can... Garmin link) that Sal would think I had been trying to be clever, and doing a negative split. This is where you deliberately try to run the first half of the run slower than the second half (or to put that another way, speed up during the second half). If you can achieve this, it basically shows that you balanced out your energy well during the race, and didn't tire yourself out too hard in the first half. For a fine example of this, just see my Great Eastern Run 2011 time, which was text book (tip - the splits are right at the end). Anyway, the point was that looking at my splits on the garmin, it appeared to me that I'd been going slower initially than later. This was entirely spurious. The fact of the matter was, I'd been listening to the Archers for the first hour and some. (Note to self: do not listen to the Archers when they are talking about Down's Syndrome babies: OK, I was listening to the Archers and crying). After it finished, I switched to music, and sped up.

Oh, and this guy on a bike high-fived me! That was probably the highlight of the run, actually. It was funny, one of those moments of understanding that he wanted to high-five me (why??) and the thud of his hand against mine (harder than I thought it would be), and then... just disappearing. That, and seeing running Dave going the other way when I was half way round Ferry Meadows. I shouted "At 14 miles", and he shouted back that he was also doing 14 miles. This prompted me to shout "No, I've DONE 14 miles", and I think he shouted, "Looking good" but it was hard to know for sure.