LONDON MARATHON 5

The fearless duo have completed their first outing!  We agreed that we would take it easy, and we are trying to follow the suggestions pasted on every website that 4 minute miles at the start of the training period are not a good idea.

We therefore suppressed our natural competitiveness and inclination to run each other into the ground, and very maturely set off at a comfortable pace of about 10 minutes per mile.  The course was cross-country and not without its undulations, but we took them in our stride (made sure all the steep ones were downhill!).  


The old war wound suffered last week was not far from surfacing, but a rather ungainly stomp on the heel of my right leg (reminded me of the sheep with its foot stuck in a tin can of Dr Seuss fame!) whenever an upward incline presented itself did the trick, and averted an uncomfortable moment after a mile and a half when I wondered whether I should continue.  

The thought of the grief I would get from my aged colleague, not to mention the FNDC (Friday Night Drinking Club), gave me the mental kick up the proverbial and motivated me to find a way to offset the discomfort.

Further discomfort was doled out when a threesome overtook us at pace, and one of them was a lady!

I can see the e mails being drafted now - "Dear Farnham Herald, The appalling chauvinism demonstrated by the self-styled Roger Bannister of Tilford demonstrates the un-reconstructed boorishness manifest by many a pitiful male who protests in words that they are egalitarian in every respect, but then blasts this assertion out of the water in practice."

So I of course retract this comment, except that, it has to be said, most males find it inherently and inexplicably unsettling to be bested in the domain of the Hunter-Gatherer by one of the fairer, but equally valued (!), sex.  My amateur, and hopefully inoffensive, explanation is that there is nothing wrong in finding ladies who are more talented in your pastimes - most of us are getting very used to that - but because we men are genetically programmed to strut and ooze testosterone (see rutting stags, proud peacocks, the King of the Pride), and just because we have sired our progeny, replaced our 6-pack with a Party Seven, and are losing our eyesight (age-related!), doesn't mean that we wish to become like the Black Widow Spider, and get eaten by our ladies!


Maybe a bit of a digression!

Just over 50 minutes later, we rolled back into town (well, Shepherd's Way), still moving freely, still able to talk, and still optimistic about the future. 

Luckily we had agreed that the final herculean effort up the precipitous cliff to the self-same Way would be our opportunity to warm down, so there was no digrace when a walking pace was adopted.  Picking up on the digression, this did not of course stop us picking up the pace once at the top lest there should be anyone who knew us, might have known us, or who was looking to be impressed by the vigour of these two slightly senior stags, both of who remain fully antlered!