Tuesday, December 03, 2019

O Man

Real life has that annoying habit of interfering with my running life, which seems to happen more often than it used to. I guess that's mostly down to me having a different job, and overall it's still a big improvement to what it was like a couple of years ago, but I'd prefer if they didn't send me on day trips to London to meet a customer as on Tuesday, or to spend a day at a conference as they did on Wednesday, but they do.

In years past I would have found a way to run anyway, probably by getting up at 4 am to do a few miles but there days, with my competitive career behind me, I'm much more relaxed about a few missed days and just got on with the rest of my life. It was probably a well time break anyway as I had been rather tired on Monday, a hangover from Sunday's long run, and a bit of extra recovery might have been just what I needed.

Not that I felt particularly fresh when I got back on the road on Thursday, it just felt like always, which isn't a bad thing. And I still ended up with a reasonable amount of weekly miles after doing a 20 miler on Sunday, which had me just about tired enough to quit after 15 but I still had to get home, and 20 it was. I guess that's where the training magic does happen, during the uncomfortable miles.

All in all I'm feeling pretty good. I wish it wasn't so dark, but on the other hand I much prefer the cold to summer's heat - I'm weird like that - and it's not as if you have a choice anyway.

Someone whose competitive days clearly are far from over is Eoin Keith, and I'm just in awe of his ability to get better and better. In case you haven't heard, he has just won the UTMB race in Oman, beating all the young bucks and showing them how it's done. I can't overstate what a big deal this is. The UTMB race series is massive and it's only the very best who can even dream of outright winning one of those races. Wow - just wow! And to think that a few years ago I was able to run with him, and even finish ahead of him when he had a bad day. I don't think that's going to happen again any time soon.

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