Taking Time

I had a physio appointment on the Thursday  6th and went for a jog afterwards to see if the ongoing knee problem was likely to play up before taking on the following Saturday's ParkRun. Luckily it performed as it should do with only a minor protest in the first mile that quickly wore off. I was taking it very easy and with a significant amount of time doing stretches beforehand together with all the activity entailed in a physio's visit and an increase in the amount of stretching done in the days before, it really should have been okay. The ParkRun itself, at Richmond with its hills, also went well although I wasn't trying to force any sort of pace at all and would be happy as long as I came in under 30 minutes. There is always a significant loss of time getting through the start at Richmond especially if you're starting off at the back and I calculated the loss this time at around 20 seconds, so a recorded time of 28:36 wasn't unreasonable this time around.

On the following Monday suffering from a fit of nostalgia I took myself off to Richmond park again, but this time for a somewhat different route. Way back when, as a member of Ranelagh Harriers, one of the local X-country running clubs, I had taken part in most of their club events and had even placed in one or two. One of their courses was a 3.8 mile X-country event through the centre part of the park which was used as a single lap race or doubled up to a 7.5 mile course. It is at least 25 years since I last  ran this course. In my down time during the last couple of months myself and Mrs D have walked the dog over the course trying to see if I could remember it. For the most part tha paths and trails are still intact but undergrowth has blocked a couple of points along the way making a couple of small detours necessary. Anyway, I set off for a lap which turned out to be rather more undulating than I remember, but was nevertheless less quite a pleasant experience. My time around the course was somewhat slower than in previous years by a good margin and I extended the lap to take in about four miles in all.

During the last jog I found that my previously faithful old Garmin watch was beginning to play up a bit. For quite a while it hasn't been taking much of a charge and whereas it would normally run for up to four hours it ran out just after the jog and now no amount of charging seems to be putting anything back in. I'd previously been toying with the idea of getting a Timex Ironman (don't laugh) watch which is half the price of another GPS watch but still has much the same timing functions as the Garmin. So taking the opportunity I've duly lashed out on a '50 lap' version and am still playing with the buttons to get to all the functions.