The mini Wall

Before The Drain there was The MINI Wall

(originally posted on Facebook 14th May 2013)

Today I hit The Wall. Not The Real Wall, that's reserved at 18 miles for people who can actually run. This was The MINI Wall, reserved at 6 miles for idiotic people who like object lessons in how not to run. 

• First check the weather and see there's a storm coming, so plan to run in the calm before the storm. 
  
  
• Get the time of your run wrong so instead of the calm before the storm you're running in the storm before the storm. 
  
  
• Forget to hydrate properly.
  
  
• Stretch once instead of twice because you're impatient to get going because of the weather
  
  
• All this on top of not enough sleep. 

Result - at 2 miles slow, at 4 miles sludgy, and at six miles threateningly empty quickly became stalled. The wind against became like treacle, my legs started to get dragged to the floor, my shoes started to make scrapey noises as I wasn't lifting them properly. I was trying to just go left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, and root march my way through it , but the wind and exhaustion were drowning out the drill sergeant in my head, who from I could tell was only capable of mumbling something along the lines of 'der duh der der derduh, floppity flop.'

So I set myself a lowered target, and at least matched my last time of 90 mins, but I only covered 8.8 miles. That works out at 10.2 mins a mile, and a marathon pace [even in dreamland] of 4h 28mins, a full half hour slower than my last time.

Message to self - prat

Nick