It's been a pretty quiet weekend here at the madhouse. Saturday morning dawned cold, with a hard frost and low hanging mist, often a sign of better things to come once the mist burns off and the sun starts to work it's magic. So, grasping the seemingly rare opportunity of a dry day, I wrapped up warm and headed out early for a few miles on the bike, planning on heading down to Whitchurch followed by a wide loop around Andover and back home the way I'd gone. Unfortunately the sunny day never materialized and by the time I'd got to Whitchurch the mist had moved off, only to be replaced with low laying cloud and a chilly breeze, which, unhappily, stopped the day from ever really warming up. Cold fingers and toes aside, it was still good to be out and coming home to a hot brew and cheese on toast Emma style for lunch was, as always, the icing on the cake. Sunday saw me lined up bright and early on another chilly day, for the start of the Mapledurham 10. This is always a good run, with a nice mixture of muddy off road fun and farm tracks, with more than enough climbing to make it a hard day out, yet still retaining enough downhill to make it enjoyable. With 10 Km and 10 Mile options and both distances starting together it's always as fast start, mainly due to the 10KM runners setting off at a sprint and everyone else being drawn along at the same pace. I'd made that starting too fast mistake before though, so aimed to set off at what I knew to be a fast but manageable pace. Telling myself not to worry about losing a few positions in the early stages as a lot of the fast guys would turn off when the courses split after a mile or so and at that point we would get a proper idea of what was happening and who was racing who. I managed to pick up a few places in the first couple of miles, settling quickly into a sustainable pace and by the time we reached the top of the first big climb I'd worked my way up to about 20th place. By the 5 mile mark and the point that things started to get seriously muddy for a couple of miles, I was locked into a race within the race with the runner in front for 17th position. We traded places a few times over the next couple of miles, him faster on the downhill, me faster uphill and pretty well evenly matched on the flat, pushing each other, neither willing to concede, both fully focused on the job in hand. And that's pretty much how it was for the final few miles, pushing each other onward, locked in our own personal battle, until we both caught and passed the man in front towards the end, moving us both up a place, finally finishing in 16th place in 1:11:24. Not quite as fast as last year, but defiantly a better run. Pacing well from the start, despite the fast start, and working well through the mud and uphill sections, I felt that this was one of my better runs. Made even better by a bit of competition from a well matched fellow runner, one that just managed to get the better of me at the end. I'll get the excuses in now though and say it was all downhill for that last mile and I'm rubbish at going downhill, not that I'm much better at going uphill, or on the flat for that matter! About the only other thing I've managed to achieve this weekend was sorting out the gardens. I've been waiting for week's for it to be dry enough to get the shrubs cut back, the orchard and rose's pruned and the other left overs of summer sorted out. With everything tidied up Saturday afternoon and a run to the tip to get rid off all the rubbish Sunday afternoon that's the gardens ready for the winter, another job ticked off the list and another job less to worry about.
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Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
March 2024
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