Typically, after the ridiculous winds on Sunday we woke up to a lovely still day on Monday, which would have been perfect marathon weather. After breakfast and tidying up we left the Airbnb and headed home. The roads were pretty quiet apart from being held up by a couple of tractors for a few miles, although as usual getting back across Ipswich seemed to take almost as long as the rest of the journey (I think we had to stop at all but one of the seemingly endless pedestrian crossings).
I managed to drag myself out for a very slow jog round the block to loosen my legs up (and to avoid leaving my year-to-date mileage sitting on 598.9), then cycled into town with Rob, Jo, Dave, Sally, Neil and Gill for dinner at the Marinero Lounge and a fairly inevitable few extra pints at the clubhouse. Fortunately the Real Ale Monday to Wednesday deal softened the blow of returning from the land of £2.20 pints to the Cricketers’ £2.99!
Back to work on Tuesday, then cycled out to Felixstowe with Rob, Jo, Dave, Neil and Ryan to show off our marathon T-shirts and/or medals before ignoring the actual training session in favour of food, beer and watching Ipswich Town lose to Portsmouth at the Grosvenor. The vague plan had been to put our bikes on the train for the journey home, but once Ryan realised there were no trains between 9.28 and 11.01 everyone was convinced to ride home too. Somehow this all got a bit competitive, with Strava telling me I had three segment PRs (the tailwind might have helped).
No respite from the beer on Wednesday, as it was time for the regular [ex-]BT meet-up at the Fat Cat, this time featuring Anders, Rupert, Tony and Dave F. Then on Thursday I finally had a free evening to relax (and to go to the supermarket to stock up my dwindling supplies of food).
I’d just finished my lunch on Friday when my phone buzzed with a reminder that my MOT test was in one hour, a fact I’d completely forgotten. The car sailed through for another year – probably not surprising as it had only travelled 1,650 miles since last year, which is slightly less than I’d run in the same time period.
I ran down to parkrun on Saturday, early enough to tag along with the course inspection again, then stopped off at the Cricketers (again) with the gang for a second breakfast. Then on Sunday I went out for a few miles in the sunshine round the Fynn Valley. No sign of my friendly sheep, but its friends seem to have taken over the bench in the field.
