The Hill

E had all her three children with her today, gathering to celebrate eldest son's birthday. I got a nod from C that she was up for the Roundhay Park Parkrun. The thought had crossed my mind but I might not have got my act together if it wasn't for her enthusiasm. I've got out of the habit.

The start is at the bottom of this hill and finishes at the top where the photo was taken from. The 5K is three laps, meaning that this incline is taken no less than four times. It gets steeper on every occasion - not that is steep, of course. That's old age talking. C got a good PB today. I got a PW, in 23.05, not that I'm beating myself up about it. I knew from the start that I didn't have any legs. There are days, increasingly many now, when - for whatever reason - the body just feels tired.

In the end, I hadn't run as slowly as I'd imagined. It was only a PW by 16 seconds. I'm now looking forward to showing up on a good day for the legs and smashing that! At least I might be able to put off another PW for a little while now. Or not. The fun these days is the challenge of maintaining performance as everything gets creakier. As always, it's the journey that's important rather than the destination. It's not just a matter of training harder, because that can be counter-productive at this stage of life. There's a fine balance involved, putting in enough effort, but not too much!

We won't mention the football. After last week's 4-3 win over Bournemouth, coming back from 1-3, we led 3-2 against Spurs only to throw it away in the last ten minutes to lose 3-4. Jesse Marsch described it as having his heart torn out. That was about right. I'm still feeling for poor Roam. I've been avoiding talking to him :(