Ah well now, first up a revelation! I’ve finally figured out why I sometimes lose all my work when typing in a reply in the RC forum. Highlight any text in your missive, hit [ESC] and bingo, you lose the lot. Not just the bit you highlighted but everything you typed and haven’t yet saved/posted. Irretrievably (unless someone has discovered a magic way to get it back that I haven’t found). Annoying, but at least I now know. I only found this out because out of habit I sometimes hit [CTRL-I] when wanting to italicise a word, but in Internet Explorer of course this just opens your “favourites” folder. I was then sometimes double-hitting [ESC] and inexplicably suddenly finding an empty edit window. Very frustrating!
Anyway, to this morning’s run (this is the second time I’ve typed all this, by the way)... determined to get in a quick 10km before work I was up at 3:50 a.m. only to find it a warm 26C with an oppressive 80% humidity. But you know what it’s like – you’ve already made the effort to get up, so you might as well tackle the darned thing. So I headed down the Pacific Highway on my out-and-back course determined to take it easy and not look at my watch until I returned, as I wanted to set my pace according to how I felt rather than what the Garmin told me.
It was incredibly warm for 4 in the morning but I forged on, wondering if I was going fast enough to ensure I was back in time to get cleaned up and catch my train to w*rk. The 5km out is a net downhill, but even that was tough going and by the time I reached the turnaround point I was struggling. The killer hill (on mornings like this at least) is a 700m slow climb at the 7km mark. By the time I reached this point I was pondering the wisdom of all this running. At the worst of it I passed the only other runner mad enough to be out there and he looked fresh and strong, so I hate to think what he thought of the stressed, dishevelled plodder coming in the other direction.
Never mind, soon enough I had covered the worst of it and once I reached the Gordon Uniting Church I knew there was only 1km to go and I’d get home. I eschewed the short cuts and completed the 10km course feeling I’d done a good day’s work, and all of it before 5 a.m.
I estimated my time at a tad over 65 minutes, but in fact it was 60:33, so not so bad really. The last time I ran this course (at the start of the month) I ran it in 57 something, so I’m relatively pleased given the conditions.
It also meant I clocked up just over 200km for the month, which surely must be a record for me. I think my physio’s advice to not run on consecutive days has not only helped the joints but perhaps unwittingly forced me to run further, as my shortest runs are these 10km semi-sprints while my standard run is 15 - 16km. Which in turn means the long slowies at 20 – 30km are very manageable and so my mileage goes up. Most encouraging!
10.03km, 60:33 hot & humid
YTD: 202km
January 2012 - Here We Go Again
