So, to get my excuses in early, it was 24 degrees when I got up at 5.30am this morning, with maybe 70% humidity making it feel yet warmer still. It also had taken me around two weeks to be able to even walk properly after our last run a month ago and the recent, er… warm weather has not inclined me to starting a serious exercise regime. Let’s face it, I’ve been fitter!
But it was a beautiful morning and it felt at least slightly cooler than the last few days, so 7.00am saw Daren & I setting off along the bottom of the Downs from Clayton rec (aka downstairs) for the bottom of the Tank Tracks.
The running was slow & easy along the lane with a good flow of conversation to distract us from the heat or the effort. Daren was super-kind to my state of general unfitness and we walked up the Tank Tracks… I always feel guilty when we do this ’cause I know that he would happily have run the whole way.
Then we turned left rather than right and ran along to the Beacon and on along to the top of the next rise. By this point my legs were already starting to flag whilst my head, under a mop of unresolved lockdown hair, felt almost superheated!
The return along the top to Jack & Jill involved a fair amount of walking on the uphill sections and one or two pauses. The final hill down to the cars is a steep one that I used to feel comfortable careering down (the record on Strava for the ‘Clayton Hill Descent’ currently sits with Jonny Crickmore at 1:53) but even here I slowed to walking pace several times to favour my legs & knees and only managed a rather sedate 6:19 🙁
Overall our run was 6.46 miles in 1 hour 21 minutes moving time (90 minutes in real money).
According to Strava, Nick (the Bok) was also running this morning & put in a somewhat less pedestrian 7.22 miles in 60 minutes (‘gentle’ for him), despite facing the same heat & humidity! Maybe we need to start comparing stats on the profundity of the conversation, where I feel that ours would have scored highly 🙂