Nothing but blue skies

I feel great!

I just had my best ever 20-miler. It took me 3:03 and an average heart rate of 126bpm: 72% of maximum. It was a glorious cloudless day: 11 degrees when I started and lifting to 19 degrees by the finish. I could almost hear Brendan saying: "Perfect weather for distance running". I was so fresh. Never has 20 miles seemed so easy.

I point all this out as you may have gathered from my previous post that I was concerned about my ankle. Pre-marathon paranoia! As I set out, I could feel the ankle aching, but by 5 miles the aching had subsided and I couldn't tell anything was wrong.

The air had a chill to it first thing. It felt great. I had a real problem keeping my pace down! I kept creeping under 9-minute miling and had to concentrate on keeping my pace above the 9:00 mark. Now that's how training runs should feel!

I still managed to have problems with dogs and children though - this time all in one go. At around 15 miles I encountered a family group of 2 adults, 2 children and 2 small dogs. They were straddling the entire width of the path. I moved to the right to go round the children, but they moved to block my way. I swerved back to the middle and the dogs wandered across me. As I side stepped around them I twisted round on my dodgy ankle. The result of this manoeuvre, apart from nearly colliding with the dad, was it started it aching again. Fortunately after another half a mile the aching had gone again, so no harm done apparently.

I think I'm going to have to rethink my tactics on avoiding dogs and children. I don't trust dogs; getting too close and possibly colliding or tripping over them is not something I'd risk. Children however are far more docile and don't have such sharp teeth, in fact some don't have teeth at all. I think the thing to do is hold my line and barge them out the way if they cross my path. A handy hedge would be a bonus for a soft landing after a deft shove. In fact my run often follows the foreshore and a duck pond. A quick shove into the pond or the harbour would be perfect. If the parents are in attendance to fish out their offspring, then no harm done. I gather kids can go without oxygen for several minutes without any damage at all.

Joking of course. I love children!


But I couldn't eat a whole one!