Okay, so it was only a little chase, but the snow-white yap-jack-russell was called Lola and it greatly amused the assembled hikers at Blackcap to see it running along, trying to bite my heels, or scare me away, or say hello, or… maybe it’s Duracell’s were running down and it thought I might have some replacements… I just don’t know. With six strides to each of mine, it quickly tired of the chase, or maybe had a power outage.
Kim had dropped me at Jack & Jill again and whilst I am generally wary of running the same route more than once in short succession, I had decided to make an exception this time as the route was exactly 13.1 miles… the distance of a half marathon.
The wind was from the north today and in common with several days in the last week, varied phenomenally in temperature as the clouds drifted across the sun. Cool, cool wind with the clouds, but when the sun shone it was instantly baking hot. Great conditions for the light aircraft that was gliding on the thermals to the north of the Downs… it passed so close that I could almost reach out and touch it… but not slow enough that my unsteady hand could capture it in the camera frame!
The split times were all exactly the same as last Sunday, all the way to the turning point just beyond Blackcap at 47 minutes. I forgot to check as I passed the trig point at Blackcap on the way back up the hill, on account of my being chased by a large white rodent at the time.
One of the reasons that I hate to duplicate runs is additional pressure it exerts, in two distinct ways. First, you know how far the path ahead is so you can’t just run and enjoy the moment in the same way. The question ‘will I match up to last week’s time’ is foremost in your mind, which adds the the same feeling. Just by running the same route twice, you’re now in a race with yourself!
I couldn’t remember what time I did last week, otherwise at around the 1 hour 35minute-mark I wouldn’t have decided to try to break 2 hours. It wasn’t a decision in terms of ‘must-do’, but rather a vague feeling that I had done last Sunday. Not wanting to be a whole lot slower, I upped the pace where this felt comfortable to do.
There was certainly a subtle difference in how much energy I had, most notably where last week I was flagging by the time I reached the Industrial Estate, I was still running comfortably this time. But I seemed to be losing the battle and the two-hour mark was looming.
As I crossed the railway line I knew I was beat, but I pushed on down the road as if the Bok was in front… trying to find that tricky balance between the best time and actually arriving at all.
I’ve been a little disappointed since arriving home at the eventual time… right up until I checked last week’s blog before starting this one. I didn’t better two hours by two minutes, but I knocked six minutes off last week’s time, with all the gain being in the second half where it can really count. 6.44mph overall, but the first 5 miles to the turn were at 6.38mph, whilst the balance was at 6.48mph… subtle differences, but the last few miles were probably quicker still, as prior to that I was just trucking along.
I shan’t be repeating the exercise next week, but might try it again in a few week’s time to see if I’m improving.