This will be a fairly quick review, as the course was completely unchanged from last time, my time was almost exactly the same, and even the weather was pretty much identical.
I went out last night with four goals:
- Run the whole thing (ie. no walking)
- Don’t get lost
- Don’t have a tantrum about inappropriate terrain
- Don’t injure self
I am pleased to report that I passed on the first three. Sadly I only half passed the last one as my right calf hurt right at the back all the bloody way round and it hurt even more when I stopped running. I suppose this is a slight improvement on both legs hurting but it seems you have to have neither leg hurting if you want to start getting faster. My time was 39:26.
After 90 minutes of yoga and an hour with the physio I’m feeling somewhat better, so will be proceeding with the London 10000 as planned on Monday. The weather forecast is for 30c+ so my plan is to “Jeff” (run/walk) at 2 mins: 30 secs ratio. Obviously the odds are stacked against me getting anything resembling a decent time but I would like to think that I can beat my times from 2012 (1:38) and 2013 (1:31). I didn’t do it in 2014 (Leyton Orient were in the League One play off final at Wembley and that’s the sort of thing that only happens once in a lifetime) or 2017 (did the Great Manchester Run instead) and I haven’t a hope in hell of beating my time from 2016 (1:14) or 2015 (1:18).
I am also doing the Westminster Mile on Sunday. I have not been able to do any specific training for this at all since before Christmas so I think I’m just going to set an appalling time that will be easy to beat when I do it properly next year.
On Saturday I will be volunteering at Hackney Marshes parkrun as timekeeper. I apologise in advance to the people of Hackney if their times are all wrong.
Finally (and yes I am tucking this down at the bottom in the hope no one will read it) I have made a big vegan error! Some time ago someone told me that nearly all real ale was vegan, because isinglass (some kind of fish guts!) is only used to filter clear beers. I have just learned that this is not true and that most ale is in fact not vegan. I did check the ingredients on the labels of the beers I drank from bottles, but as isinglass isn’t technically an ingredient, they don’t have to list it. I will be honest with you and say that the thought of giving up real ales fills me with more horror than any food. I also can’t feel the same guilt over fish as I do over sad cows and chickens. I know this makes me speciesist and a terrible vegan but I can’t help it. So I strongly suspect that beer will be back on the menu when Veganuary is up.
7:07 