I was a bit miserable this morning, having missed a 40th birthday party that I was really looking forward to last night. Kim thought it was later in the month and I didn’t realise until too late.
My neighbour’s wonderful cats cheered me up a little (I occasionally act as their food-on-feet service when my neighbours are away), a quadespresso and a little guitar playing brightened me further still and finally a great friend called from the other side of the world for a catch up, which was top banana and improved my morning no end!
It was raining persistently outside which, though GREAT for the garden and water-table, since we’ve been on drought alert, was not so appealing to run in. So, risking the mirth of Cliff & Co, I opted for a run on the machine.
I’d still not had breakfast at this point so I downed a banana (the largest I’ve seen in an age) by way of sustenance before jumping straight on and winding the speed up… somewhat against Kim’s advice. As normal I moved the speed up, up, up or down at each quarter-mile and by the time I reached 9mph had decided that I would complete 6 miles… which is about the time that I got the stitch, that big banana fighting back against being digested!
My plans for greater speed disrupted, I was adamant that I wasn’t going to acquiesce to my subconscious by stopping at 4 miles and calling it a day. Instead I just lowered the speed until I managed to catch my breath and then started increasing it again, this time every eighth of a mile.
I crossed the 6-mile line in 48 minutes, an average of 7.5mph on the nose, before cooling down for a quarter mile at a sedentary 3mph.
Cooling down is a misnomer… I was so wet with sweat when I finally stepped off that I looked like I had just stepped out of the shower. Realising that I wasn’t going to cool down for quite some time, I capitalised on the rain outside by going to wash Kim’s car… using less water than normal in the process and saving me the effort of rinsing or drying it!
I’m now finally back down to normal working temperature and am also actually really glad that I didn’t go to the party last night. I’m pretty certain that it would have been a tediously boring evening…
…without all those people, including the host, who will be attending it next weekend! Needless to say that I’ve not yet told Kim… I reckon I’m going to get six of the well-deserved best when she reads this!