The Folly of Not Training for a Race

Really enjoyed Saturday's bike ride - despite feeling very out of sorts for no readily apparent reason. Went with Husband to Verwood to do a 23 mile Rough Ride Guide route. Like most of the rides from this book, we found the navigating challenging - esp in forest where not every fire road appears to be on the OS map - and as I wasn't in a great mood, I resorted to deep self loathing at my inability to navigate! Husband was very tolerant. It was a beautiful day - sunny & bright.

I didn't really know what to expect from the landscape as I don't know the Verwood area at all. The route was varied - starting on rolling countryside, then to a mud bath through estate type woodland, tracks alongside a nature reserve then the route of a disused railway, finishing up with classic New Forest heathland. A roe deer dashed across our track at one point.

Sturt's Folly was a surprise - a 140 foot C18 tower built so that its owner could still view the hunt even though he was too infirm to participate. It was recently restored by a phone company so that it now serves as a very attractive mobile phone mast!

I had a puncture - which we were able to fix outside a Spar that had some good pasties. With just a couple of hundred metres to go, I had a more serious problem - a stone worked its way inside my front disc brakes. Husband had to yank the pads & bent clips out completely in order to get my wheel to turn so I finished the route with just my back brake.

I was debating whether to run as planned on Sunday's Beaulieu 10K as I haven't run since mid August & have been struggling to jog on treadmill recently. But I loved the race last year and C & M were planning to run so I persuaded myself I should. Another beautiful sunny day and as the race was at 10am, it was nicely cool. M was pleased to have race number 69.... It's actually 9.5K (I do wish Cancer Research had made use of Garmin to sort out their race lengths - esp as Garmin was a sponsor this year!) and I completed it in 57:30 - OK I guess. M ran a speedy race, C had problems with her achilles so took a more measured pace.

I started paying for not training later on Sunday - and today. My knee has stiffened right up & my quads are very achey.

Got hit by a flour bomb on my way home from work cutting across Lidl carpark - not great, but it's difficult to get that angry about revolting little boys being revolting little boys....