I hate road running. It’s boring, too many chances for altercations with other road users, and fewer opportunities to take photos. And it’s boring – did I mention that?
Now I’ve got that out of the way, the reason I was road running this morning was that yesterday I had an email from the organisers of the Bournemouth Half excitedly telling me it was “8 weeks to go!!!” Ah yes – 8 weeks to go until a half marathon I entered early last year, as a push to do something a little different towards the end of 2020. Naturally it was deferred, and I have been in complete denial since then about it.
Now I have 2 courses of action. I can wimp out, lose the money on the race place and the coach ticket I’ve already purchased and continue pootling around our lanes and footpaths. Or I can pull my big-girl-running pants* on, do some training, and run this thing.
Okay – let’s unenthusiastically do this thing!
I set off to run 6 miles purely on road. No sneaky footpaths, no little puddles of mud to splash in, no stiles to hang around on- just roads. I can report that my fears were confirmed and it was mind numbingly boring. And hard. Tarmac is hard underfoot.
I actually pushed on to 6.23 miles so at least I could say I’d run 10K, and I surprised myself by running it in 64 minutes. Not bad off very little training. Maybe I can run a half marathon again …
* Running pants are built for comfort, so it’s goes without saying that they are generally huge!