Backish on trackish. 8 miles and 95 minutes in teeming English rain. The chest pain followed the recent pattern: once I manage to get through the first 2 miles or so it almost goes. I say "almost goes" because even when it’s not massive, it’s always there, like some unwelcome guest hovering in the shadows outside, waiting for any opportunity to slip inside. But today it eventually became unintrusive enough to virtually ignore after a while.
There were more important things to concern me today, like the aforementioned rain. It had poured all morning and early afternoon. By around 3 o’clock it had eased off and I knew I had to make a move if I wanted to run before it got dark. Sunday is the hardest day of course, but at least I usually have the chance of running in the daylight – unlike my weekday evening training runs.
Today was a ‘stepback’ run. The running programme I’m following has a 3-week cycle, with the 3rd week being slightly easier than the 2nd. So my last two Sundays were 9 and 10 but today was back to 7 miles. (The next three weeks are 12, 13 then 10.) I decided to take a new route for today’s 7 miles. And got lost. Having just stretched a few lines around in Autoroute, I’m amending the distance to 8 miles.
The new route was as rural as it gets. In 2 or 3 miles I saw only one car and two ponies with riders. The only other evidence of human life was a series of lonely farms strung out along the lane. I noticed that one or two still had inhospitable and windblown Foot & Mouth: Keep Out signs nailed to their gates. It added to the sense of desolation. Not that I’m over-sympathetic to the much-publicised plight of the farmer. I wouldn’t mind sitting on a few dozen acres of prime farming land, a big house and a collection of spacious outbuildings. They don’t seem to have enough imagination to see a route through the consumer-disillusion that their very own cynical modern farming processes have directly created. They got caught out and they don’t like it.
There were none about today but I often come across them when I run. Perhaps one or two have nodded or grunted, but normally the most I get is a studied glare as I pass. Perhaps I misinterpret them, but I seem to represent something they despise and don’t really understand. Some middle-aged bloke jogging in the darkness or the rain. Bloody Londoner. Bloody incomer. Bloody nutter.
I’d been out only 15 minutes or so when the rain started again, and it stayed with me for the next 75 minutes, till I returned home. I didn’t mind too much. This is supposed to be training after all, and it’s as well to have some experience of sodden running. There was a strong wind as well though it wasn’t too cold. The top I wore, and that I have worn for each of the 23 runs so far in this programme, and each of the 26 runs that I did in the pre-programme training was given its sternest test to date, and it came through with flying colours. The wind buffeted me a bit but no rain got through.
It’s still hard to take seriously the idea of running the 26 miles of a marathon. Something over 3 times today’s distance. It is often said that the mistake that novice marathon runners make is to think that the halfway point of the race is 13 miles. A seasoned marathoner will tell you that the true halfway point is around 20 miles. Between 20 and 26 you have to do it all again.
A frightening and lonesome thought.
