The new running shoes arrived this week. I took them out for a 10k test run (hahahahahaha!) midweek and they seemed to perform as expected. I’m always surprised at how tight and stiff new running shoes feel in comparison to my old pair that have been through hell and high water (well rain and a little bit of mud) and have moulded to the shape of my feet.
Today was to be my “long run” of the week and with the Royal Parks Half Marathon only 3 weeks away, I felt I’d better get prepared. And what better way to prepare for running 13.1 miles than by going out and running 13.1 miles. So following what was basically last Sunday’s route with a few extra bits, I duly completed 13.1 miles (21.1kms for the Eurocentric amongst us) in 2:05:26. I thought I’d planned the route in my head pretty well but realised on the way back towards my house, that I was going to come up about 2 and a half kilometres shy of the full distance so had to incorporate all manner of loops and detours.
It was an easy run and only began to feel slightly more difficult around the 16km mark. Then it got less and less pleasurable by the metre which the distance miscalculation only aggravated as I could have run 2 kms in one direction and been home instead of executing a seemingly random set of loops and swirls to extend the run to the required distance. Still, the new shoes did the trick and I have some new and strangely placed blisters to add to my collection.
Finally, the Royal Parks Race pack arrived this week containing this years top. The top from the first year was excellent – nice burgundy colour, made of bamboo (eco-friendly, wicking etc.) and is probably my “top of choice” for a long run. Last years t-shirt didn’t even get to the charity shop but went straight into the bin as it was an horiffic lavender colour with a slogan on the reverse that looked like it had been dreamt up and subsequently designed by a 7 year old girl. So there was a certain amount of expectation for this years design. When I looked at it in the bag, the first thing that struck me was that it was orange. Although quite a nice orange. And it was made of the nice bamboo, wicking material so doing well so far. It also has the RPH logo on the chest and looks quite stylish. Good. Unfortunately, it then succeeds in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by having an awful white and purple design on the reverse that appears to be a footprint containing a silhouette of someone running through some leaves. The script at the side reads, “I believe in leaves”…
Soundtrack to this post: Klaxons – Echoes