It’s been another good week. The much-vaunted Stockport 10 goody bag was faintly repellent, but the race was great – friendly, smiling marshals, a challenging but not too horrid course and a 10 mile PB to round it all off. Not bad.
I knocked more than 6 minutes off my previous 10m PB, so I think it was the real deal. It didn’t feel quite as tough as Guy Fawkes, but it was certainly on a par with 2009 Bradford 10 miler, so I have safely achieved my pre-Christmas aim of running faster over shorter distances. With PBs at 5k, 10k and 10 miles, I’ve got myself pretty much to where I wanted to be. Maybe I need to slow down.
It’s been nice to run without snow as well. I suspect that my rant of Chapter 11 has led people to think I love the snow and hate snow-haters, but this isn’t true (I just hate whinging). I was getting fed up with the ice by the time it left, and Chris has worn the shovel to a pitiful stub. Who knows, if it had lasted, I might even have whinged myself.
So it was grand to see just how quickly ice can vanish when it puts its mind to it. I’ve enjoyed running off-road in the snow (it’s taught me to pick my feet up), but I’ve missed not being able to run on the pavements, or in the dark. I like running in a carpark as much as the next gal, but I’ll be glad to be on familiar runclub territory this week.
Still, the snow helped me tick off another first – me and Chris running together. We don’t usually do this, as he can’t run as slowly as I can, but snow is a great leveller, and with a bit of running-back-to-pick-up-the-slower-runner (me), we managed a thoroughly enjoyable trot round Eccup reservoir. I fell on the ice in Golden Acre carpark, but I was very brave, didn’t cry, and ran on regardless. The scenery was beautiful, the sussurating ice at the edge of the reservoir was positively musical and life felt good.
PS – People of my generation will know why I picked this song title – younger boys and girls may have to Google it.
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