Happy Birthday to me!

It's my birthday! To celebrate, I thought I'd try some creative use of my Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS unit.

The idea was to set the GPS running and have my Aunt drive me into the heart of the Shropshire countryside. She would then dump me, lost (I bet she's been longing to do that!), and I would use the GPS breadcrumb trail to guide me back home. (That's home on the Shropshire/Staffordshire border, not home on the South Coast, in case you thought I was ultra training!)

Well that was the plan, and I had a very nice 12 mile run, with one important proviso. If the plan had been followed exactly, then not only would I, technically, have been lost, but so too would my Aunt and Uncle. Despite them having: a car, a set of maps, each other, and years of local knowledge, they would have been in more of a predicament than me! I might have even beaten them home! I sincerely hope this wouldn't have happened, but the look of fear on my Aunt's face when I suggested the plan, suggested this might indeed be the case!

So the revised training plan was that I studied the map the night before, carefully planning a scenic but straight route, which no one could get lost on. It started for me in the middle of nowhere, took in the historic Boscobel House with it's famous (infamous?) Royal Oak (not a pub, but the real thing - King Charles II hid up it), and returned home to the lovely village of Pattingham, scene of the annual Bells of Pattingham run, and just down the road from the site of the Tough Guy race. A pretty straight route, with just one right turn to remember. I'd have preferred the adventure of not knowing where I was going, but it just wasn't going to happen!

I had a lovely run, if a little on the cold side. It's unusual for me to have my hat and gloves on for the whole run! The main thing though is it completed my first 40 mile week since the recent virus. I'm still a little slow but I feel good. Long may this continue!