Garmin almost made it! Janathone done. Yay!

I wasn’t sure how to end Janathon. Having done over 6 miles everyday through wind, rain, cold, relative warmth (I wore shorts and a short-sleeved top Thursday of the first week!), snow and just normal January weather, the day was average. Having done the majority of the runs on the hills around Paddlesworth a flat outing seemed a sad end. Having achieved my goals and having moved the goal posts twice (from 186 to 192 to 200 miles), upping my mileage to gain a leaderboard place seemed pointless.

So having had a bad day (read busy as hell without time to think of a run let alone doing one) I realised time had gone and the best I could do from work was a quick 1.6 mile out and back to improve the evening and leave a shorter run. So that’s how I started.

And nearly finished, to be fair. All my aches and pains felt horrible and such a short outing didn’t really give them a chance to warm up and dull down.

But once home I changed and got ready to go. Until I noticed my Garmin had died. I charged it last night so knew the battery was fine but I had a grey screen with very weak, faded numbers and no functions coming up. I popped the charger on and it showed 88% battery but changed the time to 10.58. Removing the charger it went blank, started up then froze into the grey screen again. Emergency measures called for Cathy’s Garmin to be borrowed. And it was.

A loop of Knight’s Park and Park Farm made for the shortest day of the month but enough to see me comfortably over 200 miles. Challenge over. The odd bit is the Garmin still playing up (I have no map data of the Hawkinge outing, just time and distance so something was wrong as I used it there – I know how long it was and have proof from the piss-taking from a groundworker about how slow can a mile be. I didn’t explain that I’d run one and a half. I’ll accept his ridicule in the hope he comes for a jog one day.) I’ve got the data off it (what was on there) and have done a soft reset which works for a minute, allowing all functions to be explored, but after 5 minutes or so it locks and touching the buttons makes it go grey and dull again. Think it’s time to send it back to Garmin for a check. Is this a first to exhaust a Garmin thrugh the month? Will an easy week rejuvenate it, I wonder, as I hope it will me?

So back to normality. It’ll be nice to just run again soon. I’m going to rest my damaged bits (currently standing at right heel, right foot bridge, left knee outer, left knee inner, left thigh, left little toe – I let the nail grow a bit too long) for a while before starting again. Not having a Garmin will be nice in a way, depending on how long it’ll take to sort. I’ve got some joint relief  product I’m going to test and review – hopefully the battered state of my body is an ideal battleground to see if anything can cure me! If it’s any good I’ll be out and about next week.

The house needs time as well as running and blogging, least of all to repair the damage from the tree. Work needs full focus. Mountainbiking needs more attention and practice ready for Wales in April. The garden will start growing in earnest and the greenhouse will need filling up. But I also need (yep, need. Not want. Need.) to produce a sub 18 minute 5k, a sub 40 minute 10k race time and be comfortable in myself by putting on some upper body weight.

I think I need a miracle.

But 200 miles in a month. I’d never have thought it. Thank you, fragile body. Back soon.