My plan yesterday morning was to start off slow so that I didn’t run out out of puff further round and see whether this would improve the overall time. Nick arrived with a cold and a wine-induced headache, which helped me convince him it was a good plan. Alas, the slower start only lasted for five minutes by which time his faculties had magically reappeared (BOING!), but it at least gave me half a chance to warm up!
The going was wet in places and downright slippery on some of the little wooden bridges that we cross, but otherwise it was a mild and pleasant morning.
On the return leg there is a downhill section that is always hilarious in the wet. Both Nick and Daren always max it down there, irrespective of the conditions (which reminds me, I really must write a review of the marvellous book Feet in the Clouds by Richard Askwith – don’t bother finding out what it’s about, just buy it and dive in!) and today I took their lead and chased Nick down the hill. Risky strategy, which could easily have ended in tears, but I managed to hang on to just enough grip to change direction in all the right places before I ran into anything.
After that there’s a gentle uphill, where Nick slowed considerably, I’m guessing to gather his energy for the faster uphill drag by the station. Somewhere in this slower section Nick almost took a pearler (alas unnoticed by me), but at the last minute remembered that I didn’t have my camera so managed a recovery to save it for another day!
We hammered up the rise to the top of the town, after which it’s all downhill, which was a good thing as I was all-in!
In the same way that Nick doesn’t warm up, he doesn’t cool down towards the end either! The last 400m is tarmac and gently downhill and here he generally stretches out ahead of me, slowing towards the end to allow me almost to catch up. Today I hung onto his coat-tails sufficiently that in the last 100m I could sneak strategically into his slipstream, enabling me to sprint past him to the finish.
It was a pyrrhic victory as I was then pretty much speechless for a couple of hours while I tried to breathe normally again!
Deliberately following the same route as the last two runs meant that there was a time to beat, which is an interesting exercise (especially for adrenalin junkies!) but detracts from some of the enjoyment. We’ll go a different route next week.
Oh, and the time? 54 minutes, which beat both the previous weeks by a good margin. Now, how do I persuade Nick to let me have a slightly longer warm up?