Oooooh!

Oooooh!
Originally uploaded by Sparks57.

Why break the habit of the past two weeks?

Any form of physical exercise, apart from the near-death experience of my first munro last weekend, has been banished to the back-burner.

So, in the absence of sweat, the order of the day has been wine, beer and curry in tall order.

This pic was taken at the Rosoi in Bellshill tonight. It's Friday and with nowt much in the house to cook, I decided an Indian was the best bet.

Sophie challenged me to a sprint home but with three pints of Cobra and a three-course curry inside me, there could only be one winner. And that wasn't me.

Pink Floyd - BBC Seven Ages of Rock

This video is from the new BBC series Seven Ages of Rock, the first part of which went out on BBC Two last night. We (the BBC) are trialling embedded video - can you believe anyone will come to the conclusion it's not a good idea? - and the Seven Ages of Rock site here offers the code for lots of clips from the series.

Btw, Roger Waters is talking about Wish You Were Here.

Great Edinburgh Run

Great Edinburgh Run
Originally uploaded by Sparks57.

I have no will-power. Normally that kind of statement is used when someone caves in and does something that's generally perceived to be "bad" in some way.

Examples - trying to stop smoking then giving in and sneaking a fag; going on a diet then stuffing a cake down when no-one's looking.

In my case, I did the Great Edinburgh Run this morning despite knowing it probably wasn't the best thing to do.

Hence, I have no will-power, albeit in an ironic kind of way.

I've felt absolutely drained of energy for the last couple of weeks, my left achilles has been giving me increasing jip and on top of that, I and lots of my colleagues did an all-nighter overnight Thursday into Friday then continued with very little sleep on into Friday evening. All because of our rather calamitous election.

So, despite the Great Edinburgh Run being one of my favourite events, I'd more or less resolved myself to not doing it. I hadn't run for more than a week and the last outing was bloody awful. Uncomfortable, slow and generally bad bad bad.

I felt the Edinburgh race would knock the remaining shit out of me and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure if I was even that much motivated to do it.

The lovely weather of the past week gave way on Sunday morning to high winds and squalls of driving rain and when I looked out of the window at 6.30am any thought of tackling the Holyrood Park hill was quickly knocked on the head.

The minutes ticked by and I began to wonder how guilty I'd feel if I didn't do it. The angel on one shoulder was gently persuading me to get in the car and make a nice, easy run out of it while the devil on the other shoulder was telling me not to be so stupid and to go back to bed.

Do I need to fill in the rest? Like a moth to a flame, I listened to the angel and got in the car.

There's no doubt that the week-plus of not running was a benefit. My first three miles were 6.58, 7.01 and 6.54 respectively and I was feeling good.

Given that this was the third consecutive year I'd run this race, I knew that the worst was to come. As soon as we turned right into Holyrood Park, the strong wind was coming straight at us and the hill proved a real killer.

I'm embarrassed to say that the fourth mile was 8.51. The energy seemed to drain from my thighs and I couldn't pick it up much after that. The fifth mile was 7.52 and the sixth 8.03.

When all's said and done though I enjoyed it and that has to be the paramount feeling with which someone of my running ability should leave a race.

No more races until I'm well into my marathon training, which starts in mid-June. I need to get my overall aerobic fitness well up. That'll bring back the stamina.

Roll on October 7 in Inverness!!!