January 2012 - Here We Go Again

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

When I was in high school, our sadistic Physical Education teacher would begin each session with a 5km run around the local streets. Over the course of the year my times improved fairly dramatically, but there was one nasty, brutish little hill in Bowden Street that always defeated me. I never did manage to climb that hill without having to walk and it bugged me then and curiously, still bugs me now.

I was reminded of that hill on New Year’s morning on my first outing for 2012. I was exploring a new 5km addition to my usual 10km street circuit, and boy was it brutal. I thought it might be hilly, but it was far worse than I had envisaged and some of those climbs were not fun at all. And then there was that one bastard hill that took me back all those years to high school and the dreaded Bowden Street. Almost identical in that with an immense effort I could just get to the top but would then have to stop and walk – particularly horrid because just when I’m thinking I have it licked, it of course has the last laugh. A short, but genuine lung-buster. Wretched.

In fact the whole run was pretty awful. I guess I was due for a bad outing and this was it. Although I could have slugged it out for the intended 15km, I really wasn’t enjoying it, and decided to pull out for a relatively dignified 10km. If I’d pushed on it would have made it all the more difficult to get out for the next one.

I finished the run thinking “never again”, but now I’m inclined to give it another go. If I could handle those hills and see out the 15km it would be a fabulously useful training route – a reasonable distance and with about two-thirds of that distance being hills. Or maybe I’m just a masochist. A reluctant one, though.

Ah, to hell with it. I’ll just see how I feel about it next time.

10km, 64 minutes. Tough.