A little while ago, for some reason that has escaped me, I entered a half marathon.  I have no delusions of being a good runner, in fact I am pretty much the complete opposite!  My legs are conditioned for biking.  Running uses pretty much the opposite muscles in the legs than cycling do. 

I was keen to get out and do some running, having suffered from a bad back the last two weeks, I did not want to get out and run too far so that I did not re-agitate my back.  I asked Matt if he wanted to come along as well and keep me company (Matt has started running recently as Emma is doing the half marathon with me so he is running with her)

We chose Durris Hill as I fancied running off road and it was half way in between our houses.  I had a quick look at some maps online and had drawn out a route that was roughly 6-8km.  I sold Matt on the idea and we met in the car park.

The above is the route I had drawn out.  Because the 1:50’000 maps don’t show the paths I managed to print of a basic and poor quality 1:25’000.  After the customary faffy in the car park we were off.  We had both roughly committed the route to memory.

The sun was shining amazingly despite the rubbish forecast and off we went.  we both have running GPS watches (not navigational) which tells every bit of information we could possibly want, so at regular intervals we were being geeks

“my heart rate is at 87% of the max, what is yours?  Wow that is interesting Dave, mine is 86% of max, wow Matt we are really cool aren’t we” and on it went.

We got to one really steep hill, I being my normal stubborn self was not planning on giving up running up it, that was until I noticed Matt had started walking and was going the same pace as me.  I conceded.

After a while it started to feel like we were making the map fit, things did not feel right.  Oh well, lets just go a bit further and see if we can work it out.  After about  5minutes of features that should have been appearing not, we had to do one of the hardest things known to man,  it hurt us greatly.  Like a knife to the side.

“I think we are lost”

My map I had printed was useless.  We had to use our inbuilt man compasses.   We roughly knew the direction we had parked the car and off we went running.  The geeky heart rate max comparisons soon stopped and turned into “my knees hurt”  “I am thirsty” “leave me, save yourself” “tell my family I love them” type conversations

Eventually we found our way out of the woods and worked out where we where when we hit the road.  Below is a map of where we actually went with the original route drawn on for comparson.

So we ended up running just over 15kms.  Pair of total and utter pillocks.  We had to walk back along the road for another 4km to the car as our legs were shot.  This was the longest both Matt and I had ever run.  I am pretty dam stiff and sore writing this!  But it has given me some more confidence for the half marathon in 3 weeks.  Before I t hought I had no chance, now, I think I might actually have a chance in getting around!

Cheers Matt for not leaving me in the woods.