Sunday morning – nice and quiet, just how I like it. A return to yesterday’s run, see if I can do it a little faster. Usual route past the Crossrail boys, I’m starting to recognise a few of them, but I don’t know if they recognise me at all. Crossing London Wall towards Poultry (yes that is it’s name- nothing else, just Poultry), I make my way towards St Pauls tube and up to High Holborn.
Fewer folk than yesterday, and I run past one of my favourite parts of High Holborn – Staples Inn pictured. It seems so incongruous now, with many modern buildings surrounding it and still there’s a piece of 16th Century architecture holding its own, amongst the hustle and bustle. Except today, no hustle no bustle, except for me working my way up to Gray’s Inn Road once more.
I pass the mouthwatering shop that is Konditor and Cook, with its meringues and three tier cakes in the window, it’s hard to run past here usually. But Sunday being Sunday, it’s shut, saving me both money loss and waistline gain. Towards Theobald Road, it’s lovely and cool and shady and then I see her. The ultimate nemesis, I’m sure she is the Nike swoosh runner ad lady. About 6ft tall, with long blonde highlighted hair in said swooshy ponytail, wearing a vest, short shorts, extremely tanned legs, gold bangles on her wrist and sporting her Beats too.
Oh and by the way, no red face, no sweat, no sign of exertion, just a lovely loping style of run and her pace length is easily double mine. My good humour is punctuated sharply, by the sight of running perfection. Please can someone invent a place where pretty, tanned, non sweaty runners go, leaving the rest of us in peace in our belief that we don’t look too terrible when we run? The rest of my run, was punctuated by sighs and in my head me saying ‘short, dark, chunky runners are okay’. After about 5 minutes of that depressing mantra, I decided singing along to my C25K mentors mix, was as embarrassing as being compared to the Nike Swooshy lady, but I could put it down to middle-aged quirkiness.
A run in three parts – the first 2 and a bit kms, slowish pace, but enjoying the views
The second part – marred by the Swooshy lady – I must stress I wish her no ill-will, I just wish beautiful runners ran somewhere different to me!
The third part – common sense restored, albeit with some very out of tune singing along.
Playlist
Happy – Pharrell Williams
Smile – Lily Allen
Tiger Feet – Mud
Smile – Gregory Porter
Ice Ice Baby – Vanilla Ice
Under Pressure – Queen and Bowie
Nowhere Fast – Eminem and Kehlani
Compression – Francesco Digilio
Rest – Charlotte Gainsbourg
Miami Vice Theme – Jan Hammer
Never Gone Give You Up – Rick Astley
Ju-Ju man – Dave Edmunds
Marathon – Rush
Advice For The Young At Heart – Tears For Fears
The Winner – Status Quo
Snail – The Smashing Pumpkins
Stats
Distance 7.15km
Time 45:07
Average Pace 6:18 (a teensy bit faster than last time – it must have been Swooshy runner affecting my pace)
Elevation Gain 25 metres
Alzheimer’s Challenge
Kms done 1091.59
Kms to Run 926.41
