It's Saturday night, and I'm going out! As I run through the village, hoards of out-of-towners are coming off the train, all dressed up with somewhere to go. The air is a riot of smells, overly scented girls, with makeup to match, lads with enough aftershave to be classed as a fire hazard, all battling for supremacy with pungent spicy smells from the local curry houses. My nose is ablaze with olfactory overload. Finally I arrive in The Carrs and I glance down to my watch. Grrr. A few years ago, after a Wilmslow Half Marathon, I remember bumping into Christine just after the funnel at the finish. 'What was your time?', I asked, carefully noting who did what, who improved with a good pb and so on. It might have been Christine's first Wilmslow Half.
Not mine. 'What was what?' she replied. 'What was your finish time?' 'Oh' she said, 'about quarter past twelve'. Great answer. Back then, Christine wasn't bothered with her times. Not so now. All GPS'd up like the rest of us, chip time, gun time, stopwatch time, she'll already knows her finish time to the nearest second...and that before a race has started. Because we all seem to fall into the trap of being obsessed with our times and race performance. I remembered this story today and how it made me chuckle at the time, the notion of running a half marathon and not being terribly concerned with the time. I was on my way to the Mill, eager to put in a respectable performance, but my Garmin couldn't find its satellites once again.
I was already in the woods when it flickered into life, but then it seems the timer hadn't started either. Once again, no time recorded. I wish I didn't care, but clearly I do. Anyway, It's over, the 405 and me. A 610 is in the post. It'd better be good. I do like the current and average pace option which is why I'm forced along the 610 route, but thankfully, it'll be bezel free. I shall report. My legs carried me as best they could, but they are tired, as am I. I don't believe I have strong legs. String legs, maybe. Good legs for a woman, my mum always said, but not strong. I sensed change in the air today. There was windfallen fruit on the top path which caught my eye, their colour as bright as the grass borders. And I saw the moon. Beautiful.
