Countdown to Reading Half Marathon
My Reading Half Marathon race pack came yesterday, the first four digits of my number being the phone number of the house I was born in, grew up in and lived in until I was 19 when I escaped the confines of parental control and aggressive alcoholics and gained my independence by living in a 6′ x 10′ room in Walthamstow. Phone numbers aside, my race number confuses me as it has no colour on it to signify my starting place and I’m sure Shaun said his was blue and he rings me and I say I’m confused, my number has no colour, unless there’s a white start? and he looks at the race info and says yes, there’s a white start, it’s 2:25+ and I say what? I wouldn’t have put my time down as that slow, have they been reading my blog and put me in the appropriate place with all the other slackers? and this morning I wake up to the aroma of freshly baked Sainsbury’s Cheese & Onion packet bread mix and the sun is out and I want to get out early as I have an urge to make some jewellery and I think I’d better have some jelly beans to power me and I have Hawaiian punch flavour and peachy pie flavour and I’m out of the house by 9 and as I get to the marina there’s a boy wearing a purple jumper that looks like a school jumper and then I think maybe it’s navy blue and I decide it’s indigo and I wonder why there’s a schoolboy over the marshes on a Saturday morning and I go over the bridge that’s not shut anymore and is now a not very nice shade of green and yellow and it’s quite windy but not as windy as when I did my 18 mile jelly baby duty cycle ride and when I get to three miles I think I could turn round and go back the way I came as I haven’t done that before and it’ll be a change and I only want to do six miles today anyway and maybe it will energise me a bit as I’m struggling a bit on this run and feel quite heavy and I turn round but it’s windy so I turn back to carry on going and I think how am I supposed to do another ten miles on top of this next Sunday and I think bollocks and all the training has (not) been done now and whatever I do next week isn’t going to make any difference and I can’t do any running commutes next week anyway as my running commute days of Tuesday and Thursday have been reserved for pizza eating, drinking and seeing bands instead and the days after have been reserved for recovering so it looks like Shaun was right when in his supportive boyfriend way he told the journalist from the Reading Evening Post that I’m going to hate it as I haven’t done any training.
Stats:
Distance: 6:35 miles
Time: 1:08:24
Pace: 10:46 m/m
Calories: 549
Race packs: 1
Sainsburys cheese & onion packet bread mixes: 1
Jelly beans: 3
Journalists told that I’m crap at training: 1
Music:
Associates
Nirvana
Joy Division
B52s
Blur
Arctic Monkeys
Power Station
The Killers
how did you get on-what was your time
That’s a great non-race report, and I’ll stop in Reading next time I’m there, even if the toilets are outside and personal space is non-existent, particularly when it comes to using the non-lavatory.