Back on the Rain Gang

If not to motivate myself,

If not to document the training,

Then to only amuse myself with punnerific titles.

Back running last night, faster than I have done for a week.

I sincerely felt like I hadn’t run in a week.

Living in the sky has opened up a new area of the city to run in and so I took it on with vigour, trying to meet the successes of Thursday Week 2.

I’ll not lie to you, nor myself, it was hard. Within a couple of minutes I was wheezing (illness or crapness?) and I broke a non-spoken rule of the route: I looked at the time remaining on my run.

So far in “training” I’ve ran to the length of songs (so I guess I know when the torture ends), but then moved onto fixed minutage. Not looking at the clock was an attempt to trick my mind into running longer, or at least prepare myself for running for five hours straight before Christmas, but last night I was pooped and eeked out a glance at the timer.

FOUR MINUTES STILL TO GO.

Horrendous news, but I persisted and happily punched the air when the timer finally ended.

(A note to my future self, remember the times where a 15 minute 1.73 mile run was hard? Happy Days eh?)

So I ran around Darling Harbour up to Darling Island through Ballarat Park, and walked back. Recovery was long and noisy, nearly a mile walk but after the traffic update on Vega finished I was off again, around the otherside of the harbour and up towards THE bridge. Part of the route was up Hickson St, a street I’ve ended up on a number of times by accident. It’s a long and pretty desolate compared to the rest of the city, but running up it was surprisingly easy and quick.

Then it started to rain.

In Australia, when it rains, it rains on purpose. It doesn’t drizzle, there aren’t showers and it never ever looks “a bit dreicht”. It doesn’t rain cats and dogs, it rains blue whales and A380 Airbuses. The rain started in the last five minutes of the run and did not stop. It was quite nice to cool down with the rain, but on the long walk home the novelty kinda wore off. I also became very disoriented on the way back and shamefully had to ask for directions, whilst on Kent St, which is the road I live on. I discovered a champion radio show though, Barry Bissell on Vega with ‘Cover to Cover’, an in-depth look at classic albums. Not the most original idea in the world, but one of the best executed ones in a long time. I’m such a radio geek.

So 1.73 + 1.96 = 3.16 miles of actual running, 6.12 miles if you include the walking too. And you should, for it is exercise. I do. Call it a round 6. 26 miles + 9km from the Liverpool St / Kings Cross debaucle and 6 miles today makes a roundy towndy total of 37 miles. Is there potential for a the longest ever Proclaimers reference to be held before Nov 29th?

No Snickering.

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