16 February - Miles & Minutes

The weekend approaches, I shall be jogging again with honeygirl, fortysomething too, who’s training for the marathon from scratch (and raising good amounts for cancer charity to boot) She writes a great little blog with her impressions and it’s so refreshing as she’s part of a running club but finds all their obsessive talk about performance measurements and technical terms a bit poncy. Perhaps if you’re experienced, you need this form of ‘my dick is bigger than yours’ kind of exchanges which keep the monotony of running at bay. The only surprising thing is that women fall prey to this to. Or maybe it's not surprising, after all the equality we craved means we take all their bad traits on board.
Honeygirl was sweet enough to let me jog with her. I was worried I may cramp her style limping around Hyde Park for an hour but… bar a couple of brief walks, I was not an embarrassment. The highlight was that we talked all the way through. Having not seen each other in ages and only knowing each other scantily (we share the wonderfully bright in every way- best 50 something we know, R, as friend) there was a lot to fit in. This is a major development as previously I could have chatted for the first 15 mins or so but then would have had to conserve breath. Am chuffed about this. Presumably if I didn’t gab I may last a little longer? And we may cover more than the 6km we did? We shall see.

After she left me I was late for an appointment so jogged off some further ten/fifteen mins. or so to my shower. I do think that the break gives your second wind a chance to arise in your chest so hope to try this theory out. However, to get from an hour to five is… unthinkable for me right now. I am sensibly ducking out of Yoga and Powerplates today, though will keep the Bootcampilates tomorrow and am certainly not jogging till Sunday. What a great excuse this conserving energy thingy has been. I do understand though that ideally you should and can run everyday. Honeygirl tells me tales of some mentor she has who does 10km first thing in the morning on a Sunday, then goes to meet friends at pub and together they do another 15km, then he goes home and with the girlfriend goes out at sunset to do another 10km or more. I mean, is there life in between? Some granola perhaps or do these kind of people know how to enjoy food and not just eat for performance? What’s with the compulsion? We like fit, but it has to be said that runners look distinctly haggard and unhappy when they run so you know, we want to keep some fun in or it’s not worth it. I don't want my jaw to lock in some ugly grimace.