Rude London runners and blisters

Wednesday 11th December 2013

Running (6.10 Miles / 00:52:13 /00:08:33 per mile / HRZ 2)

I took advantage of being in London on business to get out for an early run around scenic Hyde Park and Green Park.

My Hotel was just behindBuckingham Palace so it was going to be pretty nice to run past the Palace and up to Hyde Park.  Unfortunately London was fog-bound and although visibility wasn’t dreadful, it was down to a couple of hundred metres at best so the run through Hyde Park was a bit less scenic than I had hoped it would be although the lack of visibility was no excuse for the rudeness of the average London runner.

Sorry to all of my London running friends, but bloody hell, what a completely unfriendly bunch.  There were literally hundreds of runners and cyclists out in Hyde Park at 7.00AM and as I’m used to giving a friendly nod or ‘hello’ to other runners here in Northern Ireland, I started doing the same as I ran along. Not one, and I really mean, not one single person even acknowledged me.

Was I invisible in the fog?  I don’t think so.  I think it was just that big city attitude and I didn’t really like it.

Anyway, the run was great and again it felt nice and easy and the pace at just over 8.30 per mile felt very comfortable indeed.

 
Thursday 12th December 2013

Running ( 4.30 Miles / 00:32:23 /00:07:31 per mile / HRZ 3)

Because I missed my usual Tuesday lunch time tempo run, I arranged with Brendan to head out at lunch today to do it rather than miss it out altogether.

We modified the route a little bit but kept to the same distance.

Once again I have seen a slight improvement from last week with an 8 second time gain and the average speed improving to 7.31 per mile.

It did feel a little bit harder than I expected it to but I’m still pleased to be consistently running times that are better than I hoped for and importantly I am being very consistent on the mile splits.  Some of the credit for this must go to Brendan as he is very steady, and although he tells me he feels it tight at times, he always looks very relaxed and in control of his pace.  I know that I don’t!

The pace splits today were 7.33 / 7.33 / 7.35 / 7.24 / 7.33 – very consistent if I do say so myself.

I did forget my socks though and ran barefoot. The resulting blisters are not good. Oh well. They'll heal.