Don't Be Afraid To Adjust Your Pace

The Cheshire Half sent out an email this week offering tips for running in hot temperatures. Saying thing such as ‘don't be afraid to adjust your pace’ and that ‘starting out too fast and overheating is not the best strategy to run your best race’. Hmmm. Who are they kidding?

We drive up to Arley Hall for the 9.30am start and park right next to the start, which is a refreshing bonus compared with some of the long walks from car parks you get these days.

The temperature is many degrees cooler than it has been, so there should be no need to use the suggesting tactics of slowing down. The route takes us through the Cheshire countryside and is largely flat. The countryside only really offers views of grass, hedges and of course tarmac, so there’s little to distract me from my task. L would have hated it, as there's no window shopping, so it’s perhaps a good job she’s not doing it. Although instead she’s looking after the excitable boys, which she’s also not enjoying much.

I run at 7:30 pace for the first half of the race and then at a 8:00 pace for the second half, producing a 1:42 which was satisfying enough.

All three of the drinks stations had bottled water, which made refuelling and cooling down easy. Despite this, some people had taken the advice to carry a bottle or wear a camel bac, which slowed them down enough for me to overtake them.

At the end a decent t-shirt and in my goodie bag apparently also a medal. Oh and a flapjack that MD tries his hardest to extract from the bag.

We head home, where it’s hard to celebrate with only one of us doing the race, so we stay in and I see the conclusion of Chris Froome’s Tour win live.

(Sunday 21^st July)

Bad Call

A bit of trek today up to Arley Hall, Northwich for this weekend’s dog show entertainment. It’s very muddy underfoot but at least it’s not raining. Getting on the paddy field that doubles as the car park was a bit of an event, as I’m sure getting off it again will be.

Meanwhile L stays local and does one of the many Wollaton Park 10k’s, in one hour and two tenths of a second. Oh dear, how frustrating. She’s not happy.

We’re not happy either. In his first run MD has pole 16 of 19 down. He also broke his ‘wait’ but somehow we got away with that and made it around to the fourth last. So not bad really but not good enough.

His second run however, a qualifier, was just embarrassing. He should apologise to Doggo as that was the main reason we chose this dog show, where there is no Veterans class for Doggo as opposed to another show elsewhere where there would have been. Our third run is less embarrassing but still not worth mentioning. Time to take our training back to the basics I think.

We’re all done before lunch. So we head home whilst there’s still some grass on the car park.

We drop in on my folks, as its Father’s Day tomorrow and also to get my Dad to wear the boys out, so that L and I can go out on the town tonight while they sleep.

We go to the Ropewalk for tea, where my meal choice is off and so too by association is L’s, as she picks the same as me. Bad call. They twice try to serve me the wrong beer and on the second occasion succeed, so it’s a rare bad night in there. We move across the road to the Borlase and the Everard’s Original.



We’re well settled until the barman tells us the gas has gone. On a handpull? Really? I think he just wanted to go home early. So back across the road to the Hand & Heart for one for the road.

(Saturday 16th June)