Porty Promathon

I managed to ignore Hogmanay totally last night so it was easy to get up today. Why I had signed up for the Promathon I wasn't sure. At least the weather looked settled.
Just outside our front door there was half a bottle of Jim Beam and the contents of a kebab lying on the pavement. They're better than us in Portobello though, - there I saw nothing but champagne corks in the sand.

I had a nice long warm up down on the shore line and kept away from the pre-race buzz. I was determined not to try and go out hard or any such tosh. It was going to be bad enough without any desperate attempts to outrun my own form and then trying and failing to hang on for three miles. So it was easy at first. Then the people started to flood past me. What I did right was I didn't try to hang on. I 'let them go'. That John Forker breezed past me chatting all the time. I managed a few words back but that was it. At two miles I fancied a walk break but it was very public and there didn't seem to be any excuse for this so I kept on keeping on.

The leaders coming back towards us was a good distraction and took my mind off things for a while. My legs were telling me they were tired. What rot.
It seemed an endless trundle along to the 'turn around man'. To my surprise there were people still behind me. Bonus. God it's a long prom. Finally I was at where the fun park used to be until nature improved it and I knew it was safe to lift the pace if I could. To my surprise I could and managed to get away from a small shoal of other runners around me.

Then fini - the end. Juice and raisins. Just over 8 minute miles. Don't even bother telling me that story about how you once ran a whole marathon at an average pace better than that or I will have to hurt you.
Peter, meantime, decided to obliterate the pain of being beaten by two other MV50s by running straight into the sea. It's a cruel business - but addictive. Or maybe it's cruel because it's addictive. A few people said it was good to see me back. "I'm not back, I'm not back" I told them, but nobody seemed to believe me. "No way, Jose" I muttered to myself, "there is no way I'm going to start all that business again." I had to actively stop myself from thinking while I was running, for God's Sake, because it was so awful and I wanted to walk. Why would you do that to yourself?

Then I met old friend Caroline MacIntyre - now Clark - who is just dipping her toe into the racing world. I found myself, like Pinkman at the Narcotics Anonymous meeting saying "We should go and do a small hill race" (d'you wanna try this blue meth? huh?). Michael Geoghegan was saying something about the Greenmantle Dash tomorrow but I managed not to hear.

Anyway. Now I am hungry and thirsty. I might go out and see if that JB and the kebab are still there.
Happy New Year One and All!