Half Marathon insanity

A friend came to visit on Friday night, which of course was call for celebration; alcohol related celebration. She remained and we ate especially spicy chicken wings with The Editor and his wife on Saturday evening, with further mild alcoholic celebration.

There's no way to say if it affected my performance, but I certainly wasn't aware of any negative side effects. Unlike The Editor, who it turns out, is Chicken Intolerant. It caused a record number of sit down visits to the bathroom on race day. And that's on top of the stand up problems currently being exhibited. The Half Marathon proved to be much like running the gauntlet for him, passing Sunday morning gardeners watering their plants and washing their cars. Notable mention should also be made that a large section of the idyllic route through the trees meandered beside the briskly flowing river and gentle waterfalls. I don't know how he held it in.

As it turns out, his bowel AND mental states were stronger than mine, winning both the race and holding his sanity for the duration. I on the other hand developed a form of mental tourettes after 6 miles, presumably due to a lack of blood to the brain. I found myself chastising anyone blocking out the beautiful sound of nature via the medium of iPod. And also talking aloud some thoughts that should really have not been overheard by other competitors around me. You need some form of motivation and entertainment to complete this distance, however. Perhaps an iPod might actually cure me in that respect.

Enjoying my house guest's company for another evening, we heartily celebrated the completion of Sunday's event with a dinner of Pheasant and chips. That was after the pub lunch and mid afternoon celebratory Pringles and Empire biscuits. The plan for a lovely healthy dinner was completely overshadowed by my vampiric desire for carb replenishment. When I finally ended the consumption for the day I even had to pull out the hoover to tidy the aftermath, such is the crumbly nature of processed carbs. Well, that and a drunken attempt to better the current world record for cracker eating. Again.

36 hours later, the tender ache of exerted gluts and quads lingers on. It'll be another 36 hours before the weekend's other excess disappear too.

On a more informative note, the finish line was crossed in 1 hour and 44 minutes. A comfortable pace was maintained throughout, showing considerable scope for improving that time. Interestingly, if the previous 10k event's speedy pace was directly extrapolated, the finish would have been just over 1 hour and 39 minutes, which does not account for the inevitible fatigue. So this result was very satisfactory indeed.

Current weight is 13 stones 4 pounds (186 pounds / 84.4 kg).