Eagles on tour, can I stop now?, wet & muddy, sloooooooooooooooooooooow and a race is missed.
The best laid plans…
Today didn’t go well. We were meant to go for an easy 30 minute run at Tilgate parkrun, grab a quick hot chocolate to go and drive to Dorking where I would run the Box Hill Fell race and The Son would cheer me on from the side.
Instead we had a rushed journey to Tilgate Park because The Son arsed around getting ready and made us leave later than planned. The parkrun was late starting and The Son moaned & whined the entire way round while barely running.
He did cheer up when his hot chocolate was finally ready but that took an age to arrive thanks to the parkrunners in front of us deliberating on what to order:
Shall I have a coffee? Maybe a tea? No a coffee? What kind of milk do you use? Can I see the cakes? Are they nut free? I’ve changed my mind and want a tea. No a coffee. No a tea. Also a lemonade. What kind of lemonade is it? I don’t like some brands as they’re too fizzy. Was it a tea or coffee I wanted?
ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Paying with cash would have been too easy so out came the debit card to pay for the tea and lemonade. No. Hang on a moment. I will have some cake so please cancel everything and put it all through the till again.*
ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Even all that would have been bearable if the pimply faced student serving wasn’t moving at a snails pace. He definitely looked like someone who’d been enjoying his magic mushrooms the night before.**
Finally. We made it out of the car park. There was still just enough time to drive to Dorking, get to the race HQ, collect my race number, stroll the mile up to the start and get going… if the roads were clear. FECK. Traffic jam thanks to minor road accident.
Arrived at race HQ with enough time to grab race number and jog the mile to the start.
The Son decided that he didn’t want to get out of the car. He wanted to sit there until I finished the race and came back. That would probably have been 2 hours. Have you seen the video of Blaze the husky refusing to go to his kennel? That was The Son refusing to move from his seat in the car. There was no way that I was going to leave him there by himself so just gave up and drove back towards London with a disappointed look on my face as I saw the runners starting their race up a massive hill.
We went straight to lunch at a Japanese restaurant in Camden and afterwards I bought myself some new Mizuno road running shoes in Runners Need.
I have to thank the wonderful folk at Tilgate parkrun and all the volunteers for putting on the run in tough conditions. The lake has flooded the surrounding area so the normal route could not be used. Their big loop – little loop course was used instead and they made regular social media updates overnight to confirm that parkrun was going to go ahead. Lovely people and fantastical friendly marshals.
* I embellished the story for humour. It actually wasn’t funny. It was just painful.
** I can’t prove that he was actually enjoying magic mushrooms. However, if I had to dress like a cowboy at 10am on a Saturday in a Western themed restaurant & bar then I’d probably dull the pain with a cocktail of drugs.
Janathon 2014:
- Exercise completed today: running
- Distance run today: 3.13 miles
- Distance run so far: 124.06 miles
1 comment
Don’t you just hate hesitant people, arggghhhhhh….