Longish Run

Bad Santa

Photos - what Peter saw. I didn't see anything. Apparently some of the birds are goosanders.

The Marcothon continues and we keep churning out small and frequent mileage. By yesterday night, despite having run everyday we had only made 23 miles  for the week. Both of us are a bit rounder after Christmas despite avoiding most of the stuff that goes with it.The hardest thing to resist or what we're least managing to resist is drinking a wee bit every night. I'd had 3 "dry" days by yesterday although Peter was making inroads into my winning beers from the Greenmantle Dash. We managed to squeeze in a 3 miler round Arthur's Seat last night in between picking up a package that the postie couldn't be arsed delivering from the Royal Mail depot and going to Tesco's for a late Friday shop. In Tesco's we picked up a nice bottle of red, finally settled down to eat at about 10.30 at night and watched Bad Santa whilst getting mildly toasted. We were ready for Bad Santa to be truly bad but it was very funny and I have still been chuckling about it today.

Anyway, today we never got up until 11am and were needing to do something about the week's mileage and our general lack of long mileage so we hatched a scheme, given the harsh westerly wind, to run up the Water of Leith, back down the canal, along the meadows and round the back of Arthur's Seat. We had heard there were some trees down on the Water of Leith but weren't prepared for the scale of what we found! Big old trees right across the path and climbing involved. It made the route much more interesting and cheered us.

As is the usual pattern of our longer runs together, Peter got caught up taking photos and I kept plugging away, so he got his workout from interval sprints to catch me up. I lost him for long periods today.

By the time we were back on the Meadows my legs were hurting in lots of different kinds of ways and I had had about enough. It took an effort of will to go round the back of Arthur's Seat and not just run for home. I washed the trainers I was wearing today a few days ago and while doing so I took their insoles out and found the legend "July '09" inscribed inside, so maybe they're getting a bit old.

In the last mile our thoughts turned to what we wanted to eat when we got home. I had an uncanny hankering for the kind of meat paste my mum would put on ritz crackers and call it party food in the 70s. I told this to Peter and he got it right away. I doubted that kind of meat paste still existed in the world but when we got to Scotmid (if you want food from the past, Scotmid is perhaps the right place to go) we not only found Prince's paste - but it was on offer! 2 for a pound. I had the sardine and tomato and Peter went for the beef and ham. Bonzer. Salty delight.

Good to get the first longish (it was 15 and a bit miles) run in a while done. It hurt like hell despite my slow pace. I am comforting myself, telling myself its always like that when you start to run long again. I think it really is. Tomorrow's delight is the Paxton XC and we have a full Berlingo of Porties and one Carnethy cuckoo along with us.