Odio Natale. Yep, I hate Christmas. With a vengeance... Christmas just isn't Christmas anymore - especially when you start getting the season of goodwill rammed down your throat whenever you go shopping at any point after mid-October... If you think about it, as far as the shops are concerned, Christmas lasts from mid-October until early-February; meaning that there's only eight months when it isn't Christmas. There's barely enough time for them to flog Easter, Summer, Halloween, & Guy Fawkes to death before it's Christmas again... Seriously, being forced to listen to Paul McCartneys 'Wonderful Christmas Time' or Jona sodding Lewies 'Stop the Cavalry' whilst trying to shop for things that you normally buy but are now only available in gift packaging for double the price, in October/November, is enough to make me want to drag the manager across the shop floor and bludgeon him/her to death with a fibre-optic dashboard Christmas tree... Then you daren't put the telly on for fear of being force fed tinsel bedecked banal television programmes that are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator (I'm pointing the finger of blame in Simon Cowells direction) or the normal programmes have a special guest/celebrity Christmas special which is never as good as the normal episodes (the obvious exception of this rule, is of course, Doctor Who. I mean, yes, it is a Christmas special, but Cybermen, flying sharks, killer Santa's, evil snowmen, or the Titanic nearly crashing on Buckingham Palace, are everyday occurrences to a man like the Doctor...) And the food & drink that's consumed!! There's a reason that the gymnasiums & running clubs are all packed to the rafters in the new year. Fact of the week: there are over 200 calories in one Asda mince pie & over 250 calories in a Sainsburys one...) And breathe...
It's been a fairly quiet week in the Baldy household. Monday saw a heavy pool session & my penultimate Beginners Italian evening class (twelve weeks worth of lessons & I still struggle to put together a coherent sentence; although I can count to 20, conjugate some verbs, and ask where the bathroom is). Tuesday saw a tough swimming lesson which left my right shoulder in a bit of a mess followed by a good stretch of the legs at the Bridge Inn Pomphrey Sports 5K where I recorded a finishing time of 18:45. A slow time by my standards but my Pomphrey times are a good 45 seconds slower in the Winter series. It must be a sub-conscious worry of stepping in a rogue dog turd in the dark that slows me down... Wednesday saw me complete a lovely cold lunchtime run of 6.5 miles in just under 45 minutes, leaving the evening free for me to go to the Bristol Hippodrome to watch the Welsh National Opera production of 'Cosi Fan Tutte'. (I wasn't enamoured by this opera, but Saturday nights 'La Boheme' was absolutely amazing. I cried.) Thursday consisted of sandwiching a visit to a deep tissue sports massage between two 10K runs; whilst Friday saw me back in the pool to crack out 50 lengths.
Friday evening, however, consisted of fish & chips followed by more beer than is good for me. I rounded the evening off with my first ever 'Jaeger bomb' then must have left all my memories of the evening in the Wetherspoons because I'll be damned if I could remember more than a few fragments when I woke up the following morning... There's a reason, apart from marathon training, that I don't drink. I get drunk quickly but seem to have a great capacity to carry on drinking. Ergo I'm fairly well on my way after a few pints, but I'll still try to each double figures. All this means is that for most of the next morning I will feel as if I've just eaten a dodgy Heston Blumenthal creation... Thankfully, Sundays race meant no weekend drinking & then, after that, I'm on call at work for a week, so I won't be able to drink anyway. I intend to use next week as an opportunity to get my eating & drinking habits closer to what they will be once my marathon schedule begins. Hopefully it won't be too much of a shock to a body that has very quickly adapted to poor diet & alcohol.
And so to Sundays race: The Bromham Christmas Pudding Run. It was, I was informed, a flat & fast 10K race, consisting of two laps of the village of Bromham in Wiltshire, where all finishers receive a small Christmas pudding... It sounded a good way to near the end of my racing season, so I entered along with a couple of fellow BRR members. After a stressful journey (we didn't know how to get there, I couldn't get Google Maps to work on my phone, and our driver, JaykeeBoy, could have done with taking lessons from the White Rabbit). Jaykee, Helz, & myself used the jog from the race HQ to the start-line as a warm-up, and, thankfully we arrived with a few minutes to spare.
The airhorn was sounded and we were off! I kept the leaders in sight for the first mile before I suddenly hit a problem - fast rapid breathing + cold air = asthma... Bugger. I looked at my Garmin GPS & saw the reason why I was struggling - I'd completed my first mile in 5:55. I've gone much faster before, but never in such cold air. I dropped the pace slightly as my breathing deteriorated into 'squeaky toy mode' and was instantly 'chicked' as the leading lady went past me... Double bugger. The countryside scenery was pleasent enough but now I had to deal with the hypnotic lycra-clad posterior in front of me. It's a hard life innit? Another couple of kilometres further on and I now developed a stitch in my side and a tightening of the chest, so I dropped my pace a little bit further, settling into a more comfortable 6:10/mi, and, instantly, the second lady came past my shoulder. Ooh, more lycra... I passed the 5K halfway marker in 18:10 (37 seconds faster than I'd managed in the 5K race earlier in the week) and knew that I wouldn't be able to repeat that split for the second half. I just focused on maintaining a regular breath, fighting the urge to stop and use my ventolin inhaler, and just maintaining a 6:13/mi pace. I ran alongside a runner from Chippenham Harriers for a while, both of us bemoaning the headphone wearing idiot who had ignorantly cut in front of us, thus causing us to have to momentarily alter our pace, as we entered the village for the final time. I managed to catch up and pass the hypnotic lycra-clad posterior with about 500m to go and was able to push on just enough without the pain in my chest getting worse, and crossed the line in 24th place with a time of 38:18..!!
After a quick chat to several other runners, including 'lycra lady' & Jaykee (who had finished as first MV40 in 7th place), and cheering Helz as she crossed the line, I used my ventolin, reclaimed my bag, picked up my Christmas pudding (288cals) and got changed. Within fifteen minutes of crossing the line my breathing was back to normal and all chest pains & stitches were completely gone. It just goes to show what a fickle, yet fragile, thing the human body can be...
An evening training session in the pool, a game of badminton, and a couple of pints Ringwoods Best Bitter in The Ship Inn, Keynsham, seemed an almost leisurely way to round off the week...
In next weeks BaldyBlog: There's the unveiling of the '13 monkeys project' and the Grinch endeavours to be the fastest reindeer/moose in W-s-M in exchange for a race tee-shirt and mince pie (probably containing in excess of 200 cals).
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