New Kit

At the insistence of my wife Ellen, who's doing the 50 mile race at the same event, I've bought new running shorts. This wouldn't normally attract comment except for the important issue of chafing. Every point of contact between skin and material is a potential race-stopper. Go to any half-marathon and you will see blokes that will know better next time with sweaty circles of blood on their vests caused by jogger's nipple. Of course, I don't suffer from this condition because I'm not a jogger. I have been known to get the occasional episode of fell-runner's nipple which is just as painful. The cure: get rid of the man boobs and put a bit of tape on your nipples. Chafing shorts are not so easily remedied; even if they were, I'm not sure I'd want to be putting loads of tape down there. Vaseline works but it doesn't stay on very long. As tired and shabby as they are, I won't be in too much of a rush to get rid of the old shorts until I've properly field-tested the new ones.

This week's training has gone according to plan. It's a recovery week so the mileage is low. Two fives, an eight today and finishing with a 14 tomorrow. This morning's run with Ellen was great. We ended up in Loamhole Dingle which looked a lot nicer than it sounds. Tomorrow's run takes us up the Wrekin - fueled by curry and Stella. I was supposed to do two miles on Monday but it was thrashing it down and it hardly seemed worth getting my new shorts wet.