28 weeks to go, 43 miles and 2 outings with the closest I’ll get to a full running pack.

I took Christmas Day off from running for the first time in about 8 years. My main reason for usually doing this is having the route to myself in broad daylight. With the majority of my training being at night or before sunrise, the solitude aspect didn’t appeal as much as previously. I did one lap of my 7.5 mile route on Boxing Day and then the 5.4 mile route on Wednesday. Apart from being very cold, both of these efforts were uneventful.

My 7.5 miles on Friday were at a faster pace than usual. I had a tight window to fit this into between finishing work and having to collect my wife from work, normally I enjoy being in my own little world but I was surprised by how many others were out in the snow with an atrocious lack of warm clothing. The running buffs/headscarves can serve a purpose when used with other items but at least 2 other runners seemed to be putting a disproportionate amount of focus on their necks being warm!

I finished my week with 3 laps of the same 7.5 mile route this morning. Having started at 5am the first 2 laps were quite difficult in terms of keeping warm despite wearing 3 layers and hat/gloves.

The partly melted snow limited my momentum but I had just under 3 hours of a podcast called “Talking Comics” for company. The theme of the episodes was picking the best from 2017 in several categories for awards at the start of next year. I found I had read a handful of the ones they were nominating, this held my interest quite easily. It also proved a useful distraction from my sweat freezing to my gloves and I got to practice using the 2 water bottles at chest height and straw from the water bladder whilst running. Being a bit of a mouth breather makes this challenging when all 3 sources have bite valves and you have to suck through the straw. I can see this being abandoned in Paris and me unscrewing the caps on the water bottles to use them as flimsy cups instead!

There was a turn of phrase that stuck with me from the comics podcast where one of the regular contributors was arguing for a comic called The Wicked and the Divine to be included in nominations and he was saying he’d fight and die on a hill for it to be included.

I’ve found since listening to podcasts more over the last few months that when the hosts or contributors show any sort of passion and enthusiasm for the topic being discussed that it does transfer well into me running more comfortably. Having cricket, NFL, comics and PTI podcasts as weekly sources should be plenty to keep me occupied over the next few months.

Having running as an outlet for my enthusiasm over the past 8 years does give it a certain structure it lacked beforehand. Regardless of how next weekend goes, I can’t see it diminishing in the next few years