5 weeks to go.........

5 weeks to go till the big day (of the Great North Run, just in case you were wondering). I was awake fairly early, so decided I may as well get the dreaded run out of the way.

It started off reasonably well - when I say started off, I mean the first mile or so. After that, things got hard. Firstly, my hamstring started playing up. Secondly, I had to run up a hill - running up and down hills is still hard work, especially with my knee. It also seems that the Sun Gods were against me this time - despite running early in the morning, the sun was out in full force fairly early today, which made for uncomfortable running conditions.

I also took a bit of a risk this time - despite it being a longer run, I decided to run from home, rather than driving to the gym and running from there. This was a risk to me because I know the roads around my house, so it would have been easy to take a shortcut and head home early. Although I cam dangerously close to doing that, I did push on, and complete the run (with some walking involved).

At one point, at about 4 miles into the run, I was particularly tired and was running quite slowly. A bus stopped in front of me, and a fat kid got off....and then proceeded to take the piss out of me. Was I offended? Not really, more annoyed to be honest. Now this kid wasn't just fat, he was morbidly obese, so I couldn't really get too offended, cos he's probably gonna die of a heart attack in a couple of years, after his in-bred parents feed him a few million more Big Macs. In hindsight, I probably should have shouted abuse at him, he would have been able to run after me anyway (he could barely walk). But there always was the risk of him sitting on me if he did manage to catch me up.

I continued with my run, and was running through a fairly nice part of Solihull...........when a car managed to run over a squirrel in a way that launched the dead squirrel towards me. Luckily it didn't hit me. But I was running for a bit with my eyes closed. Honestly.

The last leg of the run was very hard. The increase in distance may have been a bit too much, and my legs felt like mush. My overall time took a big hit because of the last couple of miles. But, at the end of the day, I managed to get a 10 mile run in, and over the next few weeks, I'll try and do the same sort of distance, and hopefully it'll be a bit easier.