12 weeks and counting

Or, the problem with race pictures.

Quiet on the roads this week, as the programme scaled back into a "cutback" - less miles at an easier pace to allow some recovery in the aged frame. In the end, I pushed Monday's run quite hard because I felt good and wanted to test the legs at higher pace on top of Saturdays record miles. Also picked a couple of new routes at just over 8 miles for the other midweek runs. One of them won't see the light of day again, but the new route round Waterfoot and Eaglesham was quite fun, despite a long uphill slog for a couple of miles.

The weekend "long run" was nothing of the sort, being shorter than the midweek two on the enjoyable loop round the bottom end of Glen Fruin. To be honest, after a good night out on Friday, with plenty of beer and wine consumed, I wouldn't have fancied much more anyway.

Now, the race photograph thing. Every event has them. Hoards of photographers stalking the event and snapping the unwary. The results then available for sale as evidence of your athletic prowess. Except it doesn't work that way. For reasons unknown (to quote some band or other), they always seem to be positioned in the last mile - which is a bit of a mystery when there are so many miles available. 

Now, perhaps it's just me, but I suspect most people doing these events don't look at their finest in the last mile. In just about every photograph taken of me in these circumstances I look like I'm about to vomit, die or - to quote a colleague's memorable observation - like I've just been kicked very hard in the nuts.

Quite why I keep buying the damn things is beyond me. The thumbnails on the websites are small enough to offer you the vague hope that "Oh, that one looks like it might be OK...". Then you shell out, get the full size version and it's "No, belted in the nuts again".

Exhibits A and B, from the Great Edinburgh Run and Great Scottish Run are offered in evidence here. No sniggering at the back.

On reflection, perhaps the slightly eccentric approach to endurance athletics provided by The Mighty Deerstalker gives the best excuse for odd looking pictoral evidence. After all, after you've clambered 900ft up through trees, bombed back down through the same trees, paused briefly to rave, waded 200m through a freezing river, clambered up screes, run over rough moorland and waded through a muddy sump, you're expected to look like sh1t.

Finally to matters musical, and we're going way off-playlist into the left field this week. Yes, I know I'm only supposed to pick Playlist stuff, but it's my blog and I'll break the bloody rules if I want to.

It was my birthday on Tuesday (forty-somethingth) and I took myself off to xScape at Braehead for some snowboarding, as I attempt to recover some confidence after falling ever 17ft when I finally got outdoors at Nevis after Christmas. As ever at xScape, lots of board-appropriate music being piped in to the slope, but then something so odd that I almost fell off the poma. "Spectres" by this lot was one of my earliest ever albums, and I love this cod B-movie homage. I have never heard it in a public situation before, and it was such a bizarre place to break that duck, that it has to be "song that most caught my attention" this week.



The week's other amazement. Being asked by a supposedly professional fitness trainer at the gym how long a marathon is. FFS!

Week's summary: 4 runs, 30 miles. Long run 8.6m
January total: 146 miles
Miles since acceptance: 392