January Blog – The start of the 51st year
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January has been a nasty month for me with weeks of 18, 18, 19, and 16 miles only. Much of this stems from a chest infection caught in mid-December and which I have been unable to shift. I did not help myself in that month running the Heaton Parkrun on the 20th to complete 50 years of running every day, followed by the Ribble Valley 10 K on the 28th where there were only 63 runners behind out of1105 finishers and I failed to beat the hour.
I decided to cut back to 2.5 mile daily runs going as slowly as possible to give myself a “rest” and bring me back to health. In the second week of this regime Technical and Sales Rep. for Ronhill/Hilly drove me on a Wednesday night to the Run Geek store in Warrington for a “night” run. Sam and Stuart, joint owners of the store, put a lot of effort in to this project and more than 60 runners attended. I gave a talk followed by a Q & A session and off we went on a 5 K tour. A blustery night and I never expected to be running on unlit paths for part of the way. I was at the back and luckily Laura stayed with me. On the darkest parts runners with head torches made it possible for us to avoid falling into large puddles of water. Lots of pictures were taken, everyone enjoyed it and in fact one woman said to Laura,” That was the best hour of my life! “My pace of 11:19 per mile was a big effort for me compared with my pace of 13:30 per mile on my morning runs.
Three days later I attended a greater Manchester Marathon training Day at Runners Need, Chill Factor e. same deal. Talk, Q & A and group run. This time I was at the back with Race Director Simon Hill and still found it an effort. Snow fell in this third week making running more difficult.
On the first day of the 4th week after a short morning run I wrote in my training log, FELT ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL – LEGS HAD NO POWER AND LUNGS WERE REALLY STRUGGLING – PNEUMONIA? A trip to the doctors two days later got me a week’s course of Amoxiciilin and a chest X Ray. I dropped my daily run to 2 miles.
January a paltry 78 miles (126 K) brought my lifetime total to 160,078 miles (257,672 K)