It struck me the other day - so I asked the local yobs to stop throwing stones at me - seriously, it struck me that I've been running for just over ten years. I started running back in 2001, training for and then running the Bristol Half Marathon and that was meant to be it. But it wasn't. The pain from that race lasted a week. Never again, I said. I lied. It wasn't long before I was looking out another race and stepping up the training and the bug was well and truly caught.
During the past decade of running I've had a lot of highs. I got quicker and quicker culminating in my purple patch in August 2006 when I set back-to-back PB's for the 10k and 5k - 37:41 at Langford on Bank Holiday Sunday followed by 18:10 at Yeovil on the Monday and then a few weeks later I set my half marathon PB of 1:22:52. Oh, those were heady days indeed - OK, not really. From there things headed south culminating, of course, in the low of last year. Happily that's behind me now and I'm back to my best - on the fells, at least. I don't think we'll ever see me running times close to any of my PB's but then again, with the big Four O on the horizon I get to set a whole new batch of 'age category' PB's - result. I wonder what the next decade has in store...
As for today, Martin and I got out at lunch for the Dundry. The wind was strong - no - and we were running the lesser favourite anti-clockwise route. We set off quickly and by the hill I was fading. The climb was damn hard work and once over the top I was so knackered I couldn't really speed up much. Strangely I could feel the weekends races in my legs. Didn't even consider that would happen. Anyway, I finished two minutes quicker than last week and factoring in the wind - no - it was a pretty decent effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment