Day 198 Monday 16th July 5 miles : miles to date 1293 The day after the night before. I've had a few of them in my time and they normally involve lots of headache tablets. For once, the lethargy came from running and a complete abstinence of the amber nectar even after yesterdays race. The tiredness of the body was off set by my mind rambling ten to the dozen about how to get faster. I've got the bug bad. I thought I was potty about running before, but I have slipped over the line into serious obsession. It has become so bad, I even purchased a shiny new pair of ultra lightweight racing trainers today which feel like slippers and which will take some getting used to. As for today's run, in the quest to constantly find new routes I decided to try out Willen Park in Milton Keynes for what was meant to be an easy five miles in forty minutes, although I forgot and did them in 7.30's by mistake. As I am running quite a lot of my faster runs on my own, its important to me to try to find new routes and the flat paths of MK suited my plans tonight. Or at least, it would have done had Willen not been like the M25 of exercising bodes tonight. As soon as I got there, there was a big group of boot camp peeps and within a short time I was catching various runners around the lake. Now if you are going to go past someone, you have to keep the pace going and I went past a few. I then ran head first into a group of David Lloyd Redway runners and then a few others at various points. Its not the place to take it easy if you have a developing competitive streak like I seem to have acquired recently. I suspect even if I had known it was eight minute mile pace, I wouldn't have run it at that come what may. And then to home. The in laws arrived unexpectedly on their way back up't norff after a wee break down souff. Needless to say the abstinence went out the window, but mmm, the vino tasted good.