Season 2016

[Bierzo Baggie]

Need for Speed?
I think that at our age to enjoy healthy running it must be at least 2 or 3 times a week and softly-softly to avoid injuries. I’d say the running surface is important too. I suffer a lot more at other times of the year when the ground is harder.

So why am I tearing along like a man possessed on one of the hardest surfaces available?
Vanity?  Self-deception?  Just to keep warm?
It can’t be the last one, this has been the mildest January I’ve ever experienced.
4 laps of the cycle path (although speed skaters outnumber bikes).
22 minutes; the same as last week’s effort, but slightly more comfortable with less grunting.
That was Wednesday.
 
Friday; 40 lengths of the 25m pool with lots of stopping and starting. Good for me but that was half the distance the 10-year old girls in the next lane were covering, my daughter included. They were going faster too.
 
A good plan must be flexible. A dull ache from the Achilles and a slight twinge in the left knee tells me that Wednesdays should be on grass. Maybe I’ll look for a park.
 
The objective was to halt the sands of time albeit temporarily. I’ve been getting slower since my late 20s but at first almost imperceptibly so. Then in the last few years I lost the spring in my stride. It was a small spring but I miss it. I find myself yearning to run a decent 10k or even a half marathon again. I have absolutely no idea why.
 
Saturday; half Monte Pajariel and Otero. 100% off-road. A couple of minutes faster than the last time, felt nippier, but here lies the aging hill-runner’s dilemma. You gain speed running on the flat. You also get injured.

 I cannot risk getting injured but even more so, I cannot risk missing lunch for the third time running. Tomorrow’s run will therefore be an early one. I shall wear a luminous yellow t-shirt and hopefully I will not get shot.