Crisis Square Mile Run race report

I really wasn’t looking forward to last night’s race due to me not being fully recovered from Tuesday night’s excesses and having a stomach ache all afternoon and hoped the walk up to St Paul’s would wake me up. I got to St Paul’s station and met up with my fellow racers Gary and Kate, and Bernard the official bag lookerafterer.

We checked in, got our red t-shirts and me and Kate went to the pub to get changed and bumped into Al at the bar who was supposed to be meeting Kate outside in the square but who had obviously got his priorities right by getting himself a beer first.

After what seemed like about two million years the race eventually started. After crossing the start line at about what also seemed like about two million years later, I got about ten yards down the road when I saw Ben standing at the railings so I stopped and went over and said what are you doing here, why didn’t you come to find us outside Corney & Barrow and he said he’d just finished work. I said oh, are you going to be at the finish line, Bernard and Al will be there, they’re outside the pub at the mo and Ben said maybe, where’s Gary and Kate? I said they’re running. Ben said well you’d better get a move on then and stop standing here, you can’t let them beat you so off I went hoping to overtake and leave for dust catch up with Gary and Kate and for the next half mile it was practically at a standstill with thousands of runners and narrow roads and steps to go up and down and it was at a standstill at London Bridge with everyone trying to crowd into the steps there.

And I’m running and running and running but I still can’t see Gary or Kate and I’m thinking they’re going to beat me but I have an excuse in that I stopped to talk to Ben and then I get to the Millennium Bridge which is just before the finish line and I’m running up to the finish line but I can’t see Gary, Kate, Bernard or Al and I think where is everybody? I finish in 33:08, yay, but there’s no-one here and I’m thinking how will I find them, Bernard’s got my bag with my phone in it so I can’t ring anyone so I walk down to watch the runners come over the bridge and I see Kate coming and so I clap and say yay, go Kate but she doesn’t see me so I wander up to meet her and bump into Al and say oh, there you are, where have you been and he says I didn’t expect any of you to finish for about another 20 minutes and we go and find Kate and I say well done and a couple of minutes later Gary comes along too and then Bernard turns up and says oops, I’m in the doghouse now, sorry I wasn’t there at the finish line but we didn’t think you’d be back yet and I say we are finely tuned athletes and we’ve been here for ages while you couldn’t be bothered to leave the pub to come and cheer us over the finish line.

We wander back up to the square to get our goody bags and have a goody bag inspection and the general consensus is that they’re pretty shit really and Kate says that she was expecting more for all that effort and inside the goody bag is a pink transparent raincoat kind of thing which is an exceptionally sexy little number and I will post a photo of it later. I’m going to wear it all the time because it will undoubtedly make me more attractive to members of the opposite sex. Yeah right.

We go off to the pub for the obligatory post-race piss-up pint and Gary says apropos of nothing that pandas don’t like to have sex with other pandas and Bernard says who do they like to have sex with then and I say probably not middle-aged men so I wouldn’t get your hopes up if I were you and after our intellectual debate about the sexual preferences of pandas we go off to another pub and argue about who’s getting the drinks in and then we go to get pizza, yay. We then go to the pub which only has the fact that it’s open ’til midnight going for it and stay there until we realise that we’re about to miss the last tube and I want to go to Liverpool Street so we get on what the destination board says is a Circle Line via Liverpool Street train which turns out to be a complete lie as we don’t realise we’re on the wrong train until we get to Whitechapel and so I have to go to Mile End and get on the Central Line to Leyton and get a taxi from Evil Cars but I decide I’m sober enough to walk further to the nice cab office and I eventually get home, yay.

Oh yes and I said to Kate did you enjoy the race and she said yes she really enjoyed it and I said I’m doing a race in Regent’s Park on 21 July, do you want to do it too, it’s only 5k, less than we’ve just run and she says yes. Yay, I’ve got a convert 🙂

I will update later with stats and maps and stuff.

Oh and in case you think I’m wimping out of today’s Juneathon, I’ve brought my gym stuff in with me and shall be making a trip to the gym at lunchtime. I am indeed a finely tuned athlete.

Juneathon day #8 update

I have been to the gym so today’s Juneathon is completed and I can spend the evening vegging out in front of the telly and hope I don’t accidentally watch Big Brother. I have resisted so far.

Gym stats:
Treadmill: 15 minutes between 8.6 & 10kph
Rowing machine: 15 minutes
Cross-trainer: 2 minutes

I had felt energised after being on the treadmill and was fine on the rowing machine, but after 2 minutes on the cross-trainer, realised that I was actually quite knackered so went to get my lunch instead.