Didn’t make the club run last night due to my own faffing around and leaving it too late. So I thought I’d try to make up for it this afternoon by repeating the XC run from the previous week. My partner had been out in the morning doing 15 odd miles, because he does stuff like that, but was happy to walk up the hill with our pasty faced teenager who we dragged from the Xbox.
How much slower is walking?! Uphill for a mile. I stopped so many times (sometimes remembering to stop the watch, sometimes not) to wait for them that by the time I was at the top I was barely out of breath. I ran back down to them twice.
Unfortunately once at the top, neither of us could clearly remember the route, so I led the way blundering about through the trees in the general direction of where I thought we needed to go. Amazingly I found the path. After another mile of running along and then back to check on the boys progress, I let them set off on the direct route to the landmark at the top, arranging to meet them after a bit of exploring. 5minutes later I’m lost with no phone or sat nav, knowing that foot tapping would be in progress by both of them while they waited as we had a deadline of a Tesco delivery at 5!. It’s incredible how easy it is to become disorientated in a wood. Still you don’t need a compass to navigate if you’re a real runner. The obvious direction is always uphill however much I might wish it wasn’t. So up I went. I don’t remember the barbed wire fence from our club run, but it didn’t hold me back!
Looking at the data on Strava, it appears that I went round in a couple of circles before stumbling onto the path to monument! Even then I did a few turn rounds to go back and check; signposting wasn’t all it should be. I was missing in action for only about 30 minutes. Neither of them seemed bothered. In fact they were eating ice cream. Where was mine? Back down we went with me still running.
Overall my time was shockingly bad but that doesn’t matter. 5.5 miles in the bank. Lesson learned -TAKE MY PHONE! And get my other half to stump up the cash for ice cream for me too!
Hope you’re all having fun in the sun this week! Earn that chocolate - Happy Easter. 🏃♀️🏃♀️😊 🍫