I picked up a message when I got to work this morning that one of the site team was bringing their running kit in if I fancied some company. Unfortunately, I was already there withiout kit. I usually do Rye on Tuesday and Thursday, too, and company would have been lovely. But alas I was doomed to return home and run on my own.
With little enthusiasm I tried to conjure a different route to instill a sense of “easy” mileage into my soul. It showed as I left the house and ended up looping the nearest, smallest estate before creating a messy Garmin trace as I simply tacked little dead ends onto the large circle to up the distance to something near target.
It was a vile run (I love the word “vile”. One of our labourers is a dirty (as in doesn’t understand the principle of soap and water), smelly, obese individual with a penchant for annoying anyone within earshot. Hence why he’s in the last chance saloon of site work instead of maintenance from whence he came. Our forklift driver overheard two of us discussing him and nonchalantly pitched in with an unprovoked comment that “he’s a vile little man, isn’t he?”. A perfect description using a much under-rated word. I was happy.). I found no rhythm, my left lower leg in particular gave out several sharp twangs of pain in the early mile to make me consider turning back and each pace seemed to last for twenty minutes despite the whole outing only taking 43 of them. It never fails to amaze me that 8 miles in Paris seemed to last 5 seconds, simply because it’s a varied and attention grabbing destination. All paces being equal, I wonder how to alter the mind to overcome the difficulty of dull runs? Music, I guess. But since I like up-tempo, some would say predominatly fast tunes and I need to keep leg movement slow to maintain leg structure, it isn’t really an option at the moment.
Ah, well. Keep it up for 5 more days and it will all be over.
Today, incidentally, I passed last year’s total distance. But even that didn’t raise a smile at the time. I must be jaded!
124 runs, 96 exercises and 47 cycles to go.
Hope you have a more enjoyable run tomorrow