And the sun did indeed come up, although it didn’t quite hit us as hard today. Instead we enjoyed a 15mph headwind all day, which started off as refreshing and ended up as bloody irritating.
Struggled to get out of bed, struggled to get down the stairs to the car and struggled to get started, but after a slow start we made reasonable progress. Made a couple of adjustments to yesterday’s techniques by stopping for 30-60 seconds every couple of miles to pick up water – this seemed to help as we didn’t have to work so had to get going again. Times for the 26.2 were 04:26 including the breaks, or 3:58 by Simon’s watch, which doesn’t count the breaks.
Route was great, only a few miles on big roads and the rest on really lovely rural roads with virtually no traffic. Although Cath did have a close encounter with a reprobate on a moped who apparently was not put off by her protestations that she was waiting in her car for some men to arrive. Possibly thought that he was just the sort of chap Cath was looking for, and Simon and I arrived just in time to sweat all over him, which seemed to put him off a little.
The run today was punctuated regularly by Simon’s enthusiasm for marking his territory. You could pretty much set your watch by his need to regularly stop for a pee. So next time you buy a watch that needs recalibrating every 15 minutes, be sure to give him a call.
Anyway, we finished another leg. That little bastard with the sharp teeth on my quad made a further appearance again, although this time, he was accompanied not by ‘Tosser, Tosser, Tosser…’ as per yesterday’s blog, but by the first two verses of the Libertines’ ‘What a Waster’. Hats off to Mr P Doherty for so concisely capturing the plight of the long distance runner. Anyway, the good news was that in spite of feeling just the same on the quads and blister front, still managed the leg ok. Simon had a major choking fit for the last couple of miles, which I probably should have found less comical than I did, and spent the celebratory ‘we’ve finished’ moment doubled up, very possibly in tribute to Bob Phlegm from The Fast Show.
Meanwhile, we have been eating like trenchermen…have just completed a meal that featured bread, chips, rice and baked potato, which I suspect you’ll struggle to find on the diet pages of Heat or Hello magazine.
That’s all for now. Blisters to treat, maps to try and understand, emails to delete, quads to massage…you know the sort of stuff.
TTFN
You couldn’t find the combination of foods you had tonight on the menu of any eating place in Europe, but we managed it anyway.