"Each step forward has a sacred meaning of its own"   Sri Chinmoy

GRATITUDE 2 Mile Virtual Race - December 12th, 2020

Gratitude is a miracle-action in us. This miracle-action strengthens our physical body, purifies our vital energy, widens our mental vision and intensifies our psychic delight.

Sri Chinmoy

I picked those lines from Everest Aspiration - one of my all time favourite passages - to start the race this week.

There were three of us as you can see - on a cool and breezy morning when we had all decided to take it easy. Don't we say that every week? It's a mental ploy to get yourself out there and once the race starts, the intensity inevitably kicks in!

13 hard efforts in 13 weeks is something I haven't sustained for a while though, so I am still taking the warmup seriously (20-30 mins of jogging and some strides and stretching) and also starting at what feels like a sustainable speed instead of haring off...

This time I felt like I was starting pretty fast, into the teeth of the headwind coming in over Filton Airfield, and I stuck to my aim of running purely on feel and not checking the watch until the half way mark. When I did finally peek at the GPS I was expecting to see around 5.50 based on the effort level I was keeping up but it was 6:00 - a reality check that reminded me the headwind always takes its toll.

I was already slowing down by that stage and the average pace fell down as far as 6:05 as I started the final lap. I did find some reserves though and was able to run something very rare for me - a negative split! Beasting myself a bit into that last few hundred yards and giving it everything in the last hundred did result in a 2 mile time of 11:59 - I think that's 4 weeks in a row now I have managed to scrape under the 12 minute barrier. Being able to do that on a windy day was encouraging. When this year began I would definitely not have expected to be back to the times I was running 10 years ago but now it's becoming normal - one of the plus sides of all this lockdown.

So, one final 2 miler to go and then my aim has to be to get out and do a real race - with more than three of us - maybe in Jan or Feb. With a marathon planned for April or maybe even early March, it is time to forget about the short stuff for a while and get some miles in - my bike is feeling neglected too so another hilly hundred must be on the cards.

None of us knows how 2021 will unfold but I'm hoping my Iron distance race goes ahead, and the middle distance race just after my birthday that's my warmup event. Permits have just come through for our club's four GO TRI events so maybe, just maybe, we'll be racing our way through the summer.

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