Unsurprisingly, after a few weeks' headless rushing about and long-haul travel, along comes a truly horrible run. Mercifully short, devoid of redeeming features apart from the glorious sunrise through Arthurian mist, this outing will linger in my memory just as long as it takes to spew out the sorry tale here.
The legs felt lifeless, leaden, lungs like battered sieves. My core stayed in bed, allowing my body to wobble this way and that as I laboured on. Chugging up the Moyleman start I tried every trick in the book to keep going.
Graham's over soon, you need to push on
It's only half an hour, you can run for half an hour
This hill isn't event steep, or long
Suck it up
All wasted. I ground to a halt halfway up and just walked, sucking air, sweat dripping off my bowed head. Chalk it up as 'one of those' and move on. Two minutes later I was running again. I actually put on a bit of a spurt at the end. Runkeeper cheerfully flashed up its congratulations.
'This is your 4th fastest session over this distance! You've earned a reward!'
Do, please, just fuck off.