A Grim Fairy Tale...

Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then we shall begin...

Once upon a time there was a skinny bald Prince who liked to run. He liked to run a lot. Just like Dick Whittington, he hoped to go to London where he'd heard that the streets were paved with gold...  But when he got injured or his muscles ached he got very upset and started to abuse a substance called Ibuprofen. He would swallow tablets and rub gel into his muscles in the hope that the pain would go away...
On the previous Sunday, the baldy Prince had gone for an 18 mile run with a friend. At the end of the run, the baldy Prince had very stiff and sore legs, but as he was used to pushing his body to its limits he paid no heed to the pain and, in the evening, he played badminton with some other friends. The following day, Monday, his legs had felt fine so he went swimming but, so that he could give his legs a rest, he used a pull-buoy to give them a bit of a rest. In the evening he took his beloved Princess, she of rapidly expanding waistline & wild mood swings, to the Theatre Royal, in Bath, to see The 39 Steps. This greatly improved her mood and that made the Prince very happy.

On the Tuesday morning the bald Prince woke up late so, in order to get to work on time, he didn't go for an early morning jog. Instead, at lunchtime, he worked extra hard in the swimming pool. That evening he went to the athletics track to do a 2 mile warm up followed by 10x800m, with 2:30 recoveries. After a few reps the Prince was starting to feel a horrid pain in his right quad, but tried to carry on regardless. In the end, despite the pain, and after being told off by another runner for risking injury, the baldy Prince called it quits after only 7 reps and limped off the track and sat in his car sulking about his rotten luck.

When he eventually got home, he moaned to the pregnant Princess about his sore leg muscle. His hairy Codfather, Captain Birdseye, a distant relative of the Fairy Godmother, heard his moaning and felt sorry for the skinny bald Prince and, to help make the pain go away, he gave him a bag of magical frozen peas. Now, the skinny bald Prince was sceptical about the magical properties of this frozen garden produce, but, after swilling down some Ibuprofen tablets with coffee from his 'lucky' Avebury 8 mug, he sat in front of an episode of University Challenge, munching on a kipper sandwich, with the bag of magical peas applied to his right quadriceps.

After a magical nights sleep, partially fuelled by Horlicks, the Baldy Prince awoke feeling much refreshed and, whilst the pain in his thigh was still there, he felt ready to resume his marathon training schedule, although, as a precaution he intended to greatly reduce both the distance and the intensity of the run. So, instead of a 14 mile run, a distance of 8 miles around Compton Dando was settled upon with the added bonus of a post-work run. The pace was, by necessity, 'easy' with lashings of extra grit and determination reserved for the hills. Amazingly the longer the Prince ran, the easier he found the very action of running become and he was able to get round in an average of 7:12/mi. This pleased the Prince greatly and, although he was still experiencing a degree of discomfort in his thigh, after work he was able to enjoy a slow 16 lengths of the moat swimming pool... To celebrate the success of his days exercise he treated the pregnant Princess to one of his favourite high-carbohydrate home-baked meals - tomato gnocchi bake...

Over night, the White Witch sowed doubts and injury fears into the dreams of the Prince, and when he awoke in the morning he was worried about his thigh. She had also cast a gloomy weather spell which slowly engulfed the land. High winds, driving rain, and low temperatures crept in during the day and amplified the fears of the Prince. He elected not to run at lunchtime and to wait until he had visited the court physician who had elbows and thumbs of steel. After a massage, that felt like a visitation from the Spanish Inquisition, he put in a very cold and wet 5K jog around the block. His leg felt better than it had done the previous day, and this greatly pleased the Prince.

Damp underfoot...

On the final day of the working week, the White Witches gloomy weather spell still hung over the Kingdom of Compton Dando, but the Baldy Prince, accompanied by a brave Knight from his office, braced himself against the driving rain and took to the wet roads for an 'easy' 7.45 mile 'jog'. The reason for the longer than scheduled run was a quest for knowledge. The Prince wanted to ascertain if his legs were suitably recovered to cope with a double figure run the next day. The Prince and the Knight battled valiantly against the very worst of the White Witches weather. Although they were soaked to the skin, and exhausted greatly by their efforts, both were pleased when the run was completed and they were able to retreat out of the elements and grab a warm shower in Keynsham Leisure Centre.

The weekend usually brought the Prince a chance to spend some more time with the Princess, but this weekend the Princes training schedule ensured that the much needed weekend lie-in was not going to happen... The schedule proclaimed that eleven miles should be completed and verily the Prince did arise from his bedchamber in order to face the world. In anything other than Disney stylee The Prince was attacked by the Gingerbread Man after only one imperial mile. After taking evasive action in the first public convenience on the route, the Prince was able to put in what turned out to be a very, very, cold run. It was so cold that the Narnian White Witch, Jadis, might pull up in her sleigh, pulled by two polar bears, and start to tempt him with Turkish Delight and a cup of hot chocolate. He did, however, manage to complete his run in 1:18:18 and was pleased that his quads had held up so well. Although the Prince would have been grateful of a warm post-race shower, he instead got changed and, as preparation for next weeks Hanham Horror race, of which he was a Section Marshall, he walked around the second half of the course to check the route.

Responsible for the recent crappy weather?

The following morning the Prince did once again arise bleary-eyed from his slumbers to embrace the coldness of the day and embark upon his longest run of the week - all seventeen miles of it. On a day that would have hosted the Forest of Dean Trails Half Marathon and the San Domenico Twenty, both cancelled due to the White Witches bad weather which left many facing another Arctic day, the coldness of the day was not lost upon him. It was colder than the previous day, especially along the exposed, unsheltered, sections of the railway path between Bitton and Saltford, the A4 Bath Road to Keynsham, and the Avon Ring Road. With hat, gloves, and headphones on, and the latest Marathon Talk podcast on his MP3 player, the run itself was taken at a very easy, steady pace, with the slowest stages of the runs, obviously, being on the inclines which were, thankfully, sharp rather than long. The Prince only allowed one pre-scheduled pit-stop this time out and, that was taken at the 11 mile mark, at Keynsham Leisure Centre. As with the previous day, the Prince was glad to finish his run, this time in 2:07:17. Despite wearing hat, gloves, Skins tights, and a windproof Nike Storm Fit jacket, the Baldy Princes flesh was still red and raw from the cold winds that he had experienced and his quads ached greatly. Thankfully, the pain subsided after a while, and the Baldy Prince was able to spend some quality time that afternoon with both his daughter and the Pregnant Princess as they baked chocolate cakes together.

Thankfully, after such a poor start to the week, the Prince ended his week on a more positive note. But this wasn't the end of the Princes story. No, that would come in front of a big palace in just four weeks time. As Peter S. Beagle wrote in The Last Unicorn,  "Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story..."

 Weekly totals:

Run miles: 54.66

Swim lengths/metres: 108/2700m
Sit-ups: 640
Press-ups: 320
Pregnant Princesses: 1