Bit of a breakthrough?

Had a very tight schedule yesterday evening. By the time I reached Overcombe, I only had about 20 minutes to spare before I needed to get back home, in the shower and ready to go out. The only parking space was, of course, way up the hill. Marched down to the promenade taking big strides to loosen up. Saw an exhausted male runner hanging onto the gate. Wasn't sure whether he was stretching or, um . . . dying.

I started running but after a short distance, saw a woman ahead doing the shuffling thing (see previous post). The usual dilemma arose. Do I slow down and walk before I am really ready to, or do I power past her and then end up slowing down to a walk a short distance past. I decided on the latter and loped effortlessly (or at least, tried to make it look effortless) past her. There are a series of posts along the beach and I can sort of gauge how far I have run from these. I have done three posts on a good day but here was post number three looming and I was still going. So, I just kept running. I felt a bit like Forest Gump . . just kept going. Wow! By the time post number four appeared, I was beginning to falter and staggered on until I came level, at which point I slowed to a walk, gasping for air.

Shortly after, the shuffling woman shuffled past. I walked for a while while as she disappeared into the distance, and then, when she was about 30 metres ahead, decided to start running again. Now, I would look daft if I tried the same stunt again so I tried running slowly, attempting to keep her roughly 30 metres ahead. It is quite hard to run that slowly but I discovered that Luke was right, (see previous post). You don't wear out as fast.

She reached the end of the road section of the promenade and slowed to a walk. Due to my time constraint, I decided to turn around and run back, but slowly. It is not so easy when you don't have a shuffler to gauge your speed by but I think I ran almost the complete length of the promenade (about 1km) with only a very short walk in the middle. I was pretty damned pleased with that. So back out later to try again.