November 2009

So November, then. One run. One hundred and twenty-five minutes of activity for the entire month, which even by my standards of sporadic commitment is a fairly special achievement. That one run was the Marlow Half Marathon — 21.3 kilometres at an average of 5:51 per kilometre with my heart rate sitting at a very honest 174 bpm for the duration, which tells you everything you need to know about how comfortable it felt. Twenty-two achievements and eighteen personal records, which sounds impressive until you remember that setting PBs is considerably easier when you haven't run anywhere for a while.

Compare that to October, where I somehow managed sixteen runs and 126.5 kilometres, and November starts to look a little embarrassing (it is). The drop-off is pretty dramatic — from nearly thirteen hours of running down to just over two — and I'd love to blame the darker mornings, the weather turning, or some vague notion of a recovery period after a heavy training block. The honest answer is probably all of those things, plus the usual suspects. So the question going into December is whether the Marlow Half was a full stop or a comma — and given how my legs felt somewhere around kilometre sixteen, I suspect I already know the answer.

Summary generated by Claude