Manly May

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

A diet of beer and cashews conspired with an ear infection to curtail my running for a couple of days, but I threw on the running shorts and hammered out a 5km hill climb this evening, and hard work it was too. Still, it sweated a lot of the crap out of my system, so I feel much better for it. And the time wasn't too bad for a hill climb either - 30:19. This is just the first step in my hill training though, with a lot of ascending required between now and November.

Gack.

Just the thought of it makes my knees hurt.

On the racing front, there's been something of a compromise made between the City to Casino race organisers and the Motoring World Armed Tactical Response Group. The race is being run on the roads after all (rather than the concrete cycle path mentioned earlier), so I have entered the race (this coming Sunday). The bad news is that once the elite group have passed through, they are going to stop the runners at one of the major city intersections every two minutes to "relieve traffic congestion". This is the 35th year they have run this race, so this really is a major nail in the coffin I think. But anyway I figured I would just use this major affront to the sport of running as a scheduled walk break (might have to walk around in circles!) so no big deal for me really. Not aiming to set a specific time, I'm running this to honour my Dad, who won his age group in this race some 15 years ago, and also to get some road miles under my legs.

Groovy.

Oooh, nearly forgot to mention the track du jour: Makes No Difference by Sum 41. This came along just as I was thinking that it was all getting a bit tricky. But as the song suggested, a bit of pain and exhaustion was going to make no difference to the outcome - I would finish the sodding run, and I did. Strongly. Way cool.