Week 16 – just running

We have been watching Eddie Izzard Marathon Man.  I think everyone was surprised when they heard what he had done.  Now watching how it was done we are even more amazed.  Eddie breaks all the rules, and suffers for it.  But I think some of us (particularly men) cannot learn from advice, we just have to learn from experience.  The most positive thing about watching Eddie Izzard is how much fun he has with what he is doing, even though he is in pain a lot of the time. Sometimes as children we just ran along for the joy of it, to have that feeling of moving at speed and of our legs going crazy.  As adult runners we need to find that feeling sometimes, to find our inner Izzard.

Saturday sees me running out from the centre of Coventry to Wolston, up to Ansty and back again; through Coventry’s mature suburbs, out through the nowhereland of big sheds and business parks on the periphery, to the almost contiguous villages of Binley Woods, Brandon and Wolston; up the ancient track above Bretford, which is still far too muddy in places, alongside the Avon, around Brinklow and up to a long stretch of occasionally inundated Oxford Canal towpath and across the fields to Ansty.  I navigate, with difficulty across the M6, A46 junction, where they seem to be making a big mess, and no doubt are spending lots of money making some imperceptible changes to the junction to shave a few seconds off motorists journey times.  There is always money for such works.  Back through the nowhereland of Walsgrave Triangle, mature suburbs, the lively little shops of and terraces of Stoke and past the dismal flats that have been sardined into the former Highfield Road home of Coventry City.  As a final insult this development has been branded ‘The City’.

I did not manage a mid-week run.  I think it makes a difference.  So there is a bit of start-stop run-walk, but eventually the legs settle into a rhythm.  Some months ago I read an article in Runners World by some ultra runner or other.  He said that he found it best not to think about distance completed and distance still to go, but to think that he was just running forever.  I cannot say that I have totally embraced this philosophy.  I am still thinking ‘oh, just done a half marathon’ or ‘5k to go’.  However, my latest plan means I do not always know what the exact distance of my run will be. I am doing a calculation from a combination of Mapmyrun and the Coventry Way book plus I am relying on my Garmin which I think has become un-calibrated from having to have the battery removed each time it got soaked. So I set off without knowing what my total is going to be.  This imprecision is liberating.  Not knowing quite how long I have to go I just run.

36k completed at a pace of 6:45 mins/k