Midweek: St Peter's Basin
My new role at work has, so far, freed me up from a number of meetings, which is glorious. It won't last of course, but it meant I had the chance for a slightly longer run from the office today. And actually, it's now that it's struck me that that means I can reach new places. Being bored of heading out in a particular direction can get in the bin, as I've still got the potential to explore new areas. And today's new area was St Peter's Basin.
In the end, I spent a fair chunk longer than intended out on the run. And not all of it was running. First, there was a phonecall from the wife, which was really hard to pick up, given my phone was in an armband that I couldn't get it out of. That paused things for a couple of minutes. Then I decided I wanted the odd photo of where I was running. Ordinarily, if I hadn't already stopped, I'd just plough on a sacrifice the photos in favour of maintaining my pace, but my pace was already blown, so what the hell. Finally, shortly after taking my photos, I jogged past a guy washing his Jensen Interceptor III... and came to a halt again as I admired it, asked if I could take a few photos and generally chatted with him about it. You buy it here for a sniff under £60k, btw. 🤩
Anyway... back to the run. To be honest, it felt really hard to get back into a rhythm after the first pause (which probably happened after about a mile). Up to then, it had been going just fine; not particularly fast, but not too slow considering I was planning a longer run. It felt comfortable. Thereafter, it never really felt comfortable again.
By the turning point, I'd got all of my interruptions out of the way. I wavered between a nice easy return along the quayside with a walk back up the hill to the office and a bit more up and down to stretch myself. The former appealed as a way to get the pace back up, but the latter appealed as a way to avoid only being conditioned for flat routes. In the end, the latter won. After coming out of St Peter's Basin, I headed up a gentle slope past the Mushroom Works and toward the Free Trade Inn. From there, it was down the steps to the Tyne Bar and along the quayside as far as the Malmaison. Finally, I dragged myself up City Road and back to work.
Looking at the elevation chart for that last bit, you'd think I was running up a mountain. Even though it felt like it too, in reality it was a pretty gentle climb. But having never regained my initial comfort on the run, I was pretty tired by this point.
Looking ahead to the weekend, it's a bit of a special one this time. I'll be heading back to the Rising Sun parkrun, but this time as a guide runner for a colleague who's visually impaired. Never done this before, but she's pretty good at giving frank feedback, so I'm sure she'll keep me right. There's also a strong likelihood that we'll be walking at various points, as this is her first run after giving birth to a little guy at the end of last year. Prior to that, the pregnancy had put a halt to her assault on Couch to 5K as well. Feels good to be able to help someone get back into it.
So, given my parkrun's likely to be a relatively easy pace, maybe Friday would be a good day for another midweek run. We'll see. There's still Mother's Day to plan for, so that might occupy lunchtime instead...
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