Inspiring Surprises

I got up fairly late this morning and watched the Great Manchester run while eating my porridge. Some excellent performances in all the events, but for me the inspirational highlight was Haile Gebrselassie's beaming smile as he approached the tape, receiving what must have been the loudest and warmest cheer of the day.
Chris Thompson was the surprise of the race, probably for the winner too, as Sergiy Lebid and Craig Mottram were expected to be his only competition. Chris stayed on the Emperor's shoulder after Lebid and Mottram were shrugged off and a visibly perturbed Geb had to put in a second surge at around 8km. Coming under the bridge and in sight of the finish that familiar grin returned to the legend's face, and the crowd went wild.

It was great to see local lass Helen Clitheroe lead tape to gun in the women's event, too, especially at the ripe old age of 37!

Suitably inspired, I hit the road, on what was supposed to be a gentle jog. The first ½-mile was a bit quick, but that's pretty much the norm, and I figured I'd slow it down once I was off the road and onto the riverside trails. That's not quite how it went, though - I felt good, the weather was great, and the image in my mind of the Gebrselassie grin kept making me smile too. So, what the hell, I thought - I'm going to enjoy this. And I really did. 7½ miles of running bliss, mainly on leafy trails by the river and the mill pool, and it was a shame to get home! Boy, was I tired, though! I kept finding myself nodding off after lunch, so I eventually gave in and put my feet up for a snooze.

I got my mileage up to 32.6 for the week, increasing my average and bringing me closer to my 1,500 mile 2011 target. I'm not sure why I set this target, as it's a fairly random figure, and I knew even back then that my schedule would vary from week to week as the year progressed, depending on what races I elected to run along the way. Of course, once it was there in black and white (on Good Run Guide), it became something I would continually monitor and measure myself against, and I'm not entirely sure whether that's a good thing.

In other news...

I rediscovered Marathon Talk this afternoon, and listened to a couple of episodes of Martin Yelling and Tom Williams' podcasts. I was, of course, particularly interested in episode 21, the parkrun special, and was surprised to find that Tom is the Event Director at Leeds parkrun, who I spoke to when I first ran there back in October.

As I type, I'm listening to episode 22, which includes an interview with that woman Helen Clitheroe, talking about, among other things, how she'd like to do more 10ks as she starts doing less track stuff - this was back in June!

I've also continued reading Born to Run - I'm now up to chapter 17 (slow, I know, but I tend to have two or three books on the go at any time). It's still entertaining, but the Americanisms and the lapses into self-help-book writing style are a little off putting.