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Only four weeks to go until this year’s Royal Park’s Half Marathon and feeling a bit out of shape. I haven’t done much running since mid-June when the personal training sessions started. At the end of May, Me 1 had run my 6.75 mile course in just over 54 minutes, though even shortly after that there was a marked drop off in pace. Today Me1 headed out to try and complete the course, still slightly jet-lagged and with an achy lower back and it was clear that he was well off his record breaking pace. Which is possibly good news for Me2, because whoever shows the best form close to the race will be the one selected for the actual run (though might cheat and let them run half of the race each, directly competing against each other for the best. But what I will say about Me1 is that he has a persistence that Me2 lacks. Me2 often gets discouraged if the early pace is slow and also is more likely to give up if the going gets touch. Me1 didn’t turn back and decided that he would try and complete the course but not let his pace get over 10 mins a mile (which is about the level that Me2 ran 3 miles last Thursday, though admittedly the jet lag was a lot worse then). And he got round in 64.46 which was about 9min 35 per mile. It’s not going to be good enough to achieve a sub two hour half marathon yet, but his staying power was impressive.
The Me1 vs Me2 competition certainly did spur both runners on to impressive speed back in May and June, though I think overall it might be a bad way to try to get better as a runner (or some runners) as it’s hard to motivate oneselves when they know they are off the pace. I don’t quite understand how things have slacked off so badly (though mainly I can’t believe how fast I had managed to go), but hope that in the next four weeks I can get back into good running shape. You can sponsor me (or Me1 or Me2) here.
Aside from that burst of activity it was another lazy day for me. It’s such a novelty to be able to spend most of my time in bed and/or watching telly. I am stupidly excited that I can get iPlayer on my phone and then connect that wirelessly to my TV and watch what I like (tonight it was Doctor Who, Great British Bake Off, Would I Lie To You and the Stonehenge documentary). I am delighted that the job of TV Scheduler is increasingly becoming meaningless. And that “TV” itself is becoming just one of the ways that we can get entertainment. The days when you never got to see Al Fresco because your mum wanted to watch Brideshead Revisited on your one family television are thankfully long gone. Youngsters today do not have to suffer in the way that I did, in missing out on what was in all probability a low quality sketch show. In fact, had I been so-minded I could probably have found somewhere to watch Al Fresco tonight. I am glad that I didn’t though, because I would just have realised it was rubbish and thus all my years of resenting my parents would have been for nothing.
