It’s Raining - Do We Have To?
There’s been some discussion about autumn running attire recently. And today was definitely an opportunity for me to try mine out - it was raining cats & dogs at 06:30, which was the time I’d arranged with Shana to go for our run this morning.
I was wearing track tights, a long-sleeved micro fleece, an Altura (semi-) breathable cycling jacket, a cap to keep the rain out of my eyes, and gloves. Shana was wearing cotton jogging pants, cotton t-shirt, and a cotton / synthetic sweat shirt. Not surprisingly, her immediate question was, “It’s raining - do we still go?”, which bearing in mind the weather seemed quite sensible to ask.
But who said that we were doing this to be sensible? So we headed off into the wind along the sea front for a mile, and then did a short inland loop through the edge of Tunemouth to bring us back to the Park Hotel. This is the spot that’s exactly 1 mile from my house, and so I got Shana to do a mile time trial to finish the session.
She’s improving pretty fast, and managed 8:43 - almost 40 seconds quicker than the last time she did this. This at the end of a total of 3.3 miles - fantastic!
After saying goodbye to Shana, I decided that as I was pretty dry from the waist up, it’d be a good day to put on a few more miles - so I ran to the lighthouse & back. The tide was out, so I could get all the way to the lighthouse itself - a round trip of 5.7 miles. With the wind behind me, the outward leg was a very flattering 19:46, with a considerably harder return journey of 21:10, clocking 07:12 for the last mile, and an overall average pace of 07:11.
I’m actually pretty chuffed with that - by my reckoning, it would mean a half marathon time of somewhere just under 1:40:00, beating my personal best by some 12 minutes. Hmmmmmm . . . .
Workout:
- Type: Run
- Date: 10/09/2007
- Time: 06:30:00
- Total Time: 1:20:00.00
- Distance: 9 miles
- Average Pace: 8:53.33/mile
Excellent run, Karl!