Turning the corner.

So I had that run, all 10.75 miles of it, and let me tell you, it made all the difference. I knew, regardless of the state of my cough, that I needed to do that run. And I did it! I had nothing to do on Sunday, in training terms or otherwise, so I theraputically set to tidying my house, which has been slightly neglected of late. You may have noticed I've had the odd engagement here and there. Also, Frank has fleas, which I am doing my best to combat, but once they're in the carpet, the only thing to do is start the war, which goes, hoover, whack heating up (hatches the eggs), and flea bomb. And clean out hoover. (Didn't think of that did you?). Unfortunately, the first element of that necessitates all the floor being visible, so I had some work to do. Then there was the minor detail that I dropped the hoover down the stairs in August and broke the handle. What? I've hardly been in the house, OK. (Honestly, the man who sold me that vacuum cleaner told me that his mother vacuum-cleans her house three times a day. I'm still in shock.). So, the flea bombing (and hoovering) hasn't happened yet, but the house is much tidier. I'm still going nuts every time a hair (cat hair, normally) lands on my arm or leg.

Today, my routine was to run for half an hour (I still can't quite call it a "recovery run"... it sounds so wrong). I was unable to do it in my lunchtime, for being at a meeting in London all day. In fact, the whole day, which started off reasonably well-organised, as I had a relaxing wander down to let Maggie's chickens out and feed her cats (no, not chicken), and a leisurely breakfast, descended rapidly into panic because I then lost my keys, and was late leaving, so I made the train with a full minute and a half to go. I will still swear that I never put the keys where I found them. Weird.

The meeting was a bit of an adventure, because my colleaugue Chris persuaded me to hire a Boris bike (she had a foldy-uppy one, which technical people call a Brampton. They are almost as ungainly as a Boris bike to be honest). Annoyingly, there wasn't one at either of the two bike parks outside Kings Cross, so we legged it to Euston, and there also wasn't one there. I had to get the underground, and realised as the machine swallowed my ticket at the end, that I didn't have a receipt for my claim. Oops.  The way home, however, was more satisfactory, and I found a lovely rack of bikes, and selected one. They are a bit rubbish, but for the convenience of being able to grab a bike, and ride it round all day for a pound, I think they are a bloody bargain. It's a heavy bike, and the gears are very low, so it is hard to keep a speed up, but not a thing to sniff at. Chris is an unnerving person to follow on a bike, because she spent more time looking backwards at me than she did at the road, which would be OK if we weren't cycling in London. Also, she stopped at virtually every red light, which made me almost career into the back of her several times, as I thought she'd jump them. Then she didn't when I thought she would. She also overtook a guy on a bicycle, who spat over his shoulder after she'd passed him, leaving me wondering if it was like one of those computer games where you have to carefully time when you pass the spitting man... I was successful.

When I got home, and had done the important things like give Frank a stroke and his dinner, I put the chickens to bed, and went for my half hour run. It was a good run, I ran up passed Tony and Jan's house, in a little circuit. I think I was going between 10 and 10.5 minute miles. I thought about talking running with Chris - she's seemed to think I should abandon my idea of starting at 11 minute miles. She said I'd never get Dave to run that slowly anyway. I wonder if you can warm up before a race starts, and how long the effects take to wear off if you are hanging around. I could run the almost mile from my house to the startline as a warm up. But I wouldn't want to expend energy too soon, on the other hand.

Strategies! Who knew running would be this hard! Another strategy has to be how to get my computer back... this was from this morning. There's quite a definite glare going on there. I can't figure out if he's jealous of the time I'm spending with it, or if it is just because it is warm... But at the weekend he was sitting on the router.