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Tuesday 30 August 2011

End of the holiday

Stop by ultraBobban
Stop, a photo by ultraBobban on Flickr.

Stop has more meaning than one first might imagine. After 2 weeks working in Nottingham, eating hotel food for breakfast, lunch and dinner and only one 11 mile run in the last week, there was only one thing going on...body mass. Follow this up if you will with 8 days in the beautiful Loire Valley with 11 lovely friends, 34 degrees and hot sunny days and long evenings of drinking and eating French style. The food got more and more adventurous as the week went on; snails, veal, horse, pig cheek and finally, pigs head stew. Couple this with a few lengths in the European wine lake and some of the finest vineyards in all of France, it was no wonder my 11 mile trot yesterday felt a relief. 6 with Mrs UB and then another 5 of hilly for me afterwards. Moving up from Mrs UB's pace to sub 8s, then 7.30s and 7.14s to finish, I felt like clearing the cobwebs.

My run tonight was another story. 22.16 miles through some of the most income deprived areas of south london. My running partner tonight, Beardo was shitting himself at some points during the run, particularly as it is going dark earlier and earlier in the evening. Sometimes I enjoy this kind of run as it re-energises me about my job and the need to work hard to give London kids the chances they need to get out of the social mess parts of our fair city are in. I am not sure the landscape over the next few years will help at all....but it makes for a good conversation on the run.

I see Immune and Jezza are off to the Kent Coastal Marathon on Sunday. I am giving it a miss, driving is not great for my recovering leg and after 1400 miles of driving in the last 9 days, I might take the Tube to Ruislip and run the LFB Chiltern Challenge 27 mile run. But only maybe.

2 comments:

  1. Indeed Mr UB, we are off to the Kent Coastal Marathon and I have a good feeling about it although my legs are a little jaded from all the quality filled training miles I have done of late.
    I am really pleased on a personal front that you have had this chance to relax, drink and feed because you have been working very long hours recently and run many miles...your body needs to repair again.
    I just love how we say "I might run this"....we seem to be marathon ready at a drop of a hat these days. :-)

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  2. Sounds like you had an awful time while you were on holiday!!! Good to hear you had a great time, and as Jezza said, you deserved a good break. Indeed, Jezza and I are dusting off our 'Go Faster' shorts for this weekend, I have even had a taper this week, so must mean I am taking this Road Marathon malarky a bit seriously, but only for this one race, and then it's back onto the hills and trails for me. When are you gents free to have a little jog in the countryside, nothing big, a Marathon or 50K (haha).

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