David Currie

Having driven through the pouring rain (and crawled through the roadworks on the M27) it was a pleasure to arrive at a sunlit Wilverley Plain for my first Tuesday night run of the year. It made a nice change for an hour long run not to involve half an hour running up hill followed by half an hour running downhill and also to have something other than solid rock (or bilberry) underfoot! Even better was the fact that I could buy six pints (admittedly three of which were shandies) and a corresponding number of packets of crisps and still get change from a twenty pound note!
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601My cunning plan to gain a personal best at this week’s Sognsvann Rundt Medsols was to run three laps for the first time. This nearly backfired when, at around five o’clock, the heavens opened. The rain was short-lived though and by the time we were running from the car (parked as close as we can get without going through the toll) to the start there was a wide expanse of blue sky.

As everyone lined up at the start it was clear that numbers were well down – no great surprise as we are now well in to the holiday season here. My legs felt fairly fresh on the first lap as they should have done having not run since the same time last week and having had a reasonable warm-up for a change. I resisted the temptation to race the first woman to the line only to find, as usual, that she carried on for the next lap. Given that she continued to pull away from me it was fortunate (for my male pride) that she then proceeded to stop at the end of the second lap. Indeed, everyone in front of me stopped at this point so I set out on the third lap in the lead.

Needless to say a stitch kicked in at this point – probably something to do with working at home in close proximity to Christine’s baking! Fortunately it eased after a few hundred metres and by half way round the last lap I was able to stretch out my legs a bit again. Perhaps just as well as the second and third placed runners were only about 20 seconds behind. So – a personal best both in time and position. Perhaps I should stop there!

553This morning I lined up with 400+ other runners at Sognsvann for the Nordmarka Skogsmaraton (forest marathon). The rain had stopped and it was a pleasant temperature for running. The cheerleaders had gone on ahead to get a good spot. With next to no training under my belt I really had no idea how I was going to fare.

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550Off to Sognsvann again tonight for another race round the lake. As you can see, this time Christine was just holding the camera (and Emma) although she did get to run home the long way whilst I put Emma to bed. Knowing about the waves at the start still didn’t help me work out the logic as to how went in each one. I suspect it’s just up to the individual. I ran two laps again but had to stop on both of them to retie one shoelace. With a time just five seconds slower than the previous week I think that probably means I was running faster…

544On Friday I finally completed my entry for the Nordmarka Skogsmaraton. As with most sporting events, you enter online and then pay via bank transfer. It took me a few attempts to realise that, despite the field being exactly the right length, I shouldn’t include the periods in the account number that was quoted. Anyway, with the entry submitted it was time to put in a bit of training, particularly as the sun was out.

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With Christine’s parents here to babysit, both Christine and I could run at Sognsvann tonight and both decided to run two laps. Having emerged from the toilets just before the off it had completely passed me by that there were a number of start waves and I just joined in at the front. With most competitors racing round just the one lap it was quite difficult pacing myself and, with no-one around me for most of the second lap, I was definitely slowing. When two guys did eventually come past me, there was no chance that I could keep up. I’m assuming in hindsight, that they started in a later wave but rather embarrassingly they did also continue on to do a third lap. The eventual time on the clock was 24:35 which doesn’t sound so bad.

While hunting around for events to enter we came across Sportsklubben Rye’s Ryeløpet. This is a 5k race around Kongeskogen, Bygdøy. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I arrived yesterday evening, half an hour before the appointed time. The online details were a bit scant. I’d made a bank transfer but wasn’t totally convinced I’d even managed to enter successfully.

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