Running with company

Well I'm at least a week late with this post but never mind. Last weekend (not yesterday) was great as we had visits from both sets of The Boy's grandparents in the space of 4 days so it meant that me and the lovely wife could get out for a run together. Twice! Granted my pace is quicker as I've been running so much longer but it was just lovely to run together. We did a 7.8km loop and knocked over 2 minutes off second time round! Result

That puts us squarely on plan for a sub hour 10k for the wife when we run together in the Old Deer Park 10k. This course currently has my PB but we'll be running together to aim for that sub hour for her! If she lets me anyway. She's come back from her last few runs saying she runs better without me. Where's the love??

Prior to that I have a Duathlon to do and in hindsight, it probably wasn't the best idea to sign up for it. I'm never at my greatest of motivation at this time of year but I've always wanted to try it. Based on the previous line, you can probably guess that my training is less than perfect. I.e. none. a couple of runs with the wife and a cycling commute. Never on the same day obviously, that would be sensible. It looks like I'm going to have to wing it. Why do I do it to myself? This year was always going to be a bit of a slow starter as I'm trying not to overdo it so I'm ready for the marathon training come May/June but we'll see. It should be fun. Ahhem.

A week or so ago, I was also sent some rather lovely JABRA sports bluetooth headphones to play with. Basically, these headphones make it possible to listen to any music player that has a bluetooth connection without the wires that can get tangled everywhere. Genius. I have to say, as I pulled them out of the box, my heart sank slightly as I realised they were not in ear ones that I prefer, but rather the ones that sit on the ear. Not ideal but I have to say they were really good. The extra bit of genius with these headphones is they work along side the Endomondo Sports Tracker app, a running application for Smartphones with features designed specifically for Jabra SPORT, including the ability to get quick and easy status updates on speed, distance and lap time simply by tapping the headset. How useful is that!! This does work extremely well if you have a half decent GPS signal on your phone. A great little gadget which will get plenty of use on the bike as I don't generally enjoy running with music much. If you're after a bluetooth headset to use while working out, I really can't recommend this one highly enough. Almost perfect! 

It's not Grim down South - Grim Night Terror Report

'This has to be the most stupid thing we've ever done.... and we've done a lot of stupid things'

This statement made by both me and eatingtrees pretty much simultaneously at 5pm on Saturday night summed it up I reckon. Here we were, sitting in a parked car, wrapped in a lot of layers with snow falling around us, just about to run around in pitch black with only a head-torch for company on a course that can make your balls shrink just thinking about the cold and in which eatingtrees has fallen over into a puddle within the first 100m once and gone over on his ankle on a different occasion. Oh yeah and we paid £25 for the 'privilege'.

CAN YOU GUESS WHO IT IS YET?

Once we couldn't put it off any longer, we headed to the start and jumped and jigged around a lot trying to keep some feeling in muscles that were getting colder by the second where it was announced to a series of jeers and boos that they'd had to divert the course a bit owing to the 4 inch solid ice covering the larger puddles that 'would cut us to ribbons'. At that point, I wasn't overly disappointed as I was still expecting some puddles, just not knee and waist deep ones.

WHAT ABOUT NOW?

The route was 2 laps around the forest, in the snow, with loud speakers playing screaming and heavy breathing noises throughout the route. Think horror film, not porn. It was really well marshalled and all done in good spirits but it didn't take long to realise that even the smaller puddles were sheet ice and the only way you were going over those is on your arse. So pretty much everyone followed the same route diverting around the big puddles and 2 laps were completed in about an hour and 5 minutes. Pretty quick for me over 8 miles. Only is wasn't 8 miles because of all the adjustments the organisers were forced to make through not fault of their own. It turned out to be between 6.5 and 7 miles which is more than I usually run on a Saturday night in Feb I guess!

Would I run it again? Yes but only if it was a proper Grim. It has potential and this one could have been great but a week of below freezing temps leading up to it just gave the organisers no choice in shortening it and making it safer. All in all it was a bit tame. I've never been able to drive home in the same clothes and shoes from a Grim event before!!!