Meadows Mayhem

Okay, that title was just for grabbing attention. There wasn't much mayhem going on in the meadows today. What was going on was a speed session devised by me - since the meadows are pretty much 1.5 miles all around, we did 5 X mile repeats with a half mile jog recovery. I've done this before so have a bench that marks (benchmark ha ha) the start of the mile and the finish is at the far corner of the Meadows nearest Arthur's Seat. There were a number of hazards today - not least of which was a bitter easterly wind. I thought about doing the session in reverse but habit prevailed. It might have been a bit better, but then again the recovery would have been into the wind which would have been unpleasant.

I was in a foul mood - mostly brought on by fear and desperation I think. Looking ahead in the week yesterday I realised that there were few more opportunities to squeeze some running in so today's session would have to count. Its the first time the surface has been semi-reasonable for doing some speed training so it had to be today. I've not ducked below 8 min/miles since handicap night at the club in late December and I'm a couple of pounds heavier and I really wasn't looking forwards to facing the facts of my condition.

I talked over a change of direction of course with Peter but he said "Nah, It'll give us some excuses." "I don't want excuses I want results!" I thought to myself shirtily - but as it turned out I had to make do with excuses. Well, it was a strong easterly head wind. There were patches of ice on the route. There were a lot of people - maybe students returning to uni. Stupid people anyway - stupid bildering people who flopped from side to side as they walked and used up all the available space so I had to jump sideways onto the ice. Other excuses? Well I'm 43 and I've got short legs and a funny style and its a shame for me right!

I tried to let the numbers the Garmin was throwing at me drift right over my head. The thing was we were out making an effort and matters would surely improve from there. It was a relief doing some proper training again and really the time flew by. I've no intention of letting on how long my miles took but the whole session including recovery jogs, and run to the meadows and back was 12.5 miles so I'm quite happy with that. I need to sneak in a wee one tomorrow morning before work and again on Friday in the morning before I go through to Glasgow.

Richard has recruited me to run the last 30 miles of the Glasgow to Edinburgh double marathon with him on March 7th, so that gives me something to aim at. I need to start getting in longer runs so that that's not too much of a stretch...