Alcohol Free Wednesday...

I’m hoping to do the race tonight. It’s only four miles, how hard can that be? Even with fractured, I mean bruised ribs. I’m tempted to cycle to work as well and make it a really good training day but L points out that this might not be wise. Wise? For once I take her advice.

So, I get the bus into work and then later to the race start at the Navigation Inn in Breaston. L does the same from the other direction.

I get changed and jog along part of the course. When I don’t double up in agony, I decide the jobs a good ‘un and hand over my £6 to enter. It’s a good job it’s an alcohol free Wednesday, they’ve got Abbot Ale and Screech Owl on the bar. Not often you get two 5%ers side by side.



Anyhow, the race, I aim to take it nice and steady, I don’t want any relapses. I’d even be happy with 7:30 minute miles. In the end I do 7:00 minute miles, which I think is quite impressive considering.

I would have had to have gone quicker if protégée had been here but he isn’t. I’ll need to up my game by September though. He’s taken on a personal trainer so that he can do a good time at the Wilne 10k. He classifies a good time as 43:00 minutes and he only did a 44:00 at Derby but he’s bluffing. I know he can go faster than that. He knows he can go faster than that.

As he’s not here, I don’t have to worry about him but then a chap I used to work with overtakes me before the one mile marker. That shocks me, he’s never beaten me, ever. I speed up, stalk him for a while, then when I get bored with that and see something much more interesting to follow up the road, I pass him.

I thought that would be that but when I pass the line in a respectable 28 minutes for the 4.2 miles he crosses the line not 30 seconds behind me. When I check my previous times for this race I see I’ve run a 25 in all three previous years. So, blimey I was taking it easy wasn’t I?

L too isn’t that far behind me, well seven minutes, and complaining how hard it was. She says the shorter the distance the tougher the race and she may well be right.

No mug this year, which is disappointing as I’ve got the previous three. Two in white, one in black and was hoping for another black one to make a nice set. Instead it’s a pen and a chocolate bar.

My father has turned up to watch us, so it would be rude not to offer him a pint particularly as the race finishes right outside the Navigation and therefore alcohol free Wednesday goes out of the window.

(Wednesday 27th July)

Battle Cry

I cycle today and feel fit enough to return to using the hillier route via Ilkeston. I’ve almost convinced myself that I’ll be recovered enough to the run the Erewash 4 mile run on Wednesday. Almost.

L takes the car to go visit her folks and leaves me with the boys and the lawnmower. Thanks. Its best to get some distance between yourself and MD when he gets together with the lawnmower but twenty odd miles is a bit excessive. She certainly won’t be able to hear his battle cry from there, as he attacks the lawn mower. I will try and restrain the lawn mower from fighting back but there’s always the risk he might lose a whisker or more than a whisker even, an ear or his nose for instance.

Perhaps I should have suggested that she take MD with her...

The deed is soon done and MD is still intact, at least physically, if not mentally. The lawn doesn’t take as long as it used to, we have a long, brown, muddy bald patch running down the middle of it. MD’s runway and it’s also where he practices his digging. Which he’s getting very good at.

Then I cook. We have an extra guest tonight. Son has returned from Stoke where he’s been for the last four or five days, clearly he enjoyed it so much last time. Clearly he did, he’s going back again at the weekend.

(Tuesday 26th July)