Another 9.5 miles done, but not nearly as much as we would have wished.On Friday 6th, Mac and I repeated the course we had first done on Monday. We started from my house rather than his (misses out the cliff from hell!), but the distance should have been essentially the same, give or take a gnat's whisker.
However there were a number of issues! Somehow this run was hard work. Mac started off feeling as if he was running on empty, and I was happy to remain aloof but indulgent, hiding behind his explicit discomfort. After we had reached the half way point however, another kind of wind arrived and we stepped the pace up a bit.
Being shallow (as mentioned in my previous rant), we had agreed to reserve a little bit of back pocket performance so that we could impress across the last public stretch of the run, across the green where potential admirers could witness and then over the bridge and to the finish.
Despite this, it was only Les and his dog who were able to stand in awe and hurl "encouraging" comments on this occasion (running too fast to really appreciate the content!). Lovely though his dog is, I feel our strut was rather wasted; There's always next time!
The gnat's whisker was rather disappointing as I actually had us down as running a faster time overall. Nike + however decided that we had run nearly half a mile less, hence a discrepancy that accounted for my delusion.
On Monday 9th I went out alone as Mac was busy. I had to force myself to go at the same pace as we had previously and I am still developing the discipline. An approach that says you have more to give seems to be where you want to be. Giving it all doesn't seem like the right strategy until the last mile, and since we haven't got further than 5 miles, it is a bit early to up the pace.
Half way round I was delighted that the calf pull seemed to have settled down, and I was back to that model of excellence that I cast myself in. And it was at that very moment that another shot of pain seared up the back of my leg. So how does that work then?
With another 2.5 miles to nurse the injury and think of little else, the mind started to contemplate this reality. Did I start thinking of my recovery, which then triggered the recurrence of it? But that would be pretty curmudgeonly of the old mind to inflict such a wound on its own chariot - self-defeating indeed.
So now I have moved onto a more positive theory. Rather like the radio telling you that your mobile is about to ring - that interference pattern that we are surely all familiar with - maybe my calf was brought to mind because my body knew what was going to happen to it before it materially did. I am sure that I have read of such things (Molecules of emotion by Candace Pert? - a great read of an alternative kind). Parts of the body do react before we become sentient of the need to do so, and this must be what happened here.
Despite this, my average per minute was 9m59s, and Nike + had the self same distance to within 4/100s of Friday's run (what's that...60 yards ish?) so there must have been some brain fart - mine or Nike's - the previous Monday.
The consequence of this is that I have taken the week off exercise to allow a substantial period of time to recover, and fingers crossed, I will be up and running (a pun in there somewhere) again next week, although I am working (shock horror) on Monday and Tuesday of next week - in a hotel on Monday evening, so maybe an opportunity there.
Be well in the meantime, and so shall I!
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