Puffin hard

Day 313 Thursday 8th November 7.9 miles : miles to date 2061.3 Tonight was the first tempo run with the club for around six weeks, through racing and holidays. I arrived knowing that I'm a little out of shape and with yesterdays hilly run still in the legs. I decided to go with the whippets on our normal 8ish undulating road run and just see how far I got. The whippet crew were just that. Four of the fastest chaps in the club. And me. I knew from the off it was going to be a hang on for as long as I could type run which was about three miles, when the gap between me and the Flying Scotsman had opened to about thirty feet. Disaster then hit. Well, ok, not quite disaster, but my shoe laces did come undone. By the time I stopped to rectify, the gap was even bigger and the speed those boys were going it was a case of auf Wiedersehen Pet. One of the lads had pulled up to sort something out and he caught me as I was swearing at my shoes. Good and bad news. The good news was I had someone who would push me along. The bad news is he's aiming for an elite marathon start of sub 2.45. We did work together for the next five miles, up and down, dodging cars and all sorts of obstacles. The benefit of running with someone a lot faster than you is inevitably, they will make you run faster. I clocked an eventual finish time around 11 minutes or quicker than the average time I took to cover the loop this time last year. For me at least it was a good tempo run. There were times when I was puffing and conversation was hard, which is the mark of a good quicker but not flat out session. I think I might be running an easy recovery run on Friday though.