The day I broke Sal

I'd been planning on running with Sally at the weekend, but I'd been in touch with her about stuff. My world turning upside down, a bit unexpectedly. She had a good expression... she said, "Sorry. are you feeling a bit iffy?". Yep, that says it.

I wasn't sure if some people would want to get together in the afternoon, so I pushed Sal into an earlier run. Unfortunately, what with my not being that good at getting up (well, in my defence, we'd only got back from the Shakespeare-athon at 1:45 in the morning, so I did want a bit of a lie-in), and forgetting that it does take me more than half an hour to cycle to Stilton,  I didn't get to Sal's till after midday. We were planning on 12 miles, and it was pretty hot, especially for September. It sort of felt like summer had arrived actually. Only mad dogs and Emmas run out in the midday sun. Scout definitely qualifies as a mad dog, so he came. It turns out that Sals don't run that well in midday suns.

It was a lovely run. I picked up pretty early that Sal was struggling, because she paused half way up a hill, apologetically. It was a lovely day though, and we certainly picked up. One thing I learned is that Sal has a built-in garmin. I mean, I guessed she had a built-in GPS (although it did have to do some recalculations of the route a couple of times) because she's a cartographer, so when she said, what have we done, just over 4 miles? and I looked at the Garmin, and it said we'd done 4.1 miles, I wasn't too surprised. Also, I mean, she probably knows the routes, right? I can tell you how long each of my regular routes are. So, you know, not TOO impressive. But a couple of times she said, how fast are we running now, 10 minute miles? (only she varied it, depending, you know, on how fast we were going), and she was spot on, now, THAT was impressive. I often think I'm going really fast, and I'm not, or vice versa (ok, less often on that one). So that got me.

We were nearing 9 miles, and running through some fields, when she said she was seriously thinking of setting me on my way. I managed to totally embarrass her by reminding her of her own words of wisdom about not walking, but over-riding your brain's control-centre, and keep going (in fairness, this advice was for during a race), which made her cry out "Oh, I'm such a bad example!". Still, we got back into Stilton, and I thought she'd make it, although we did pause at one of her friend's houses and refill our empty water-bottles, which was a blessing, because I was really thirsty. However, we were only at 10 miles. We got onto the main road, at which point Sal said "run that way. For about a mile. Then come back". So off I went. I kind of thought she'd go home, but when I got back, she was waiting for me. In a manner of speaking. I'm sure she won't mind me using this picture, she did, after all, post it on Facebook herself.

The news was around the office before I got in on Monday. Several people asked me what I had done to Sal. It was also recommended that I just hang my shoes up now...