Nick’s runners… by special request

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Nick took this photo of his runners when they arrived back at the house the other morning… some minutes after he did: that’s how fast he was running!

I had to clean the photo up a bit as you couldn’t see the trainers for all the smoke that was coming off of them.

I’ve just been reading about how the Inuit in Greenland used to hunt Whales in the 12th Century from kayaks and umiaks (small, skin boats).  They clearly couldn’t kill a whale with a single hand-thrown harpoon, let alone hang onto it on a rope afterwards, so they developed a harpoon that released itself on impact leaving behind a barb with an air-filled bladder attached.  As the whale tired of this extra drag, so it would surface and the Inuit hunters would repeat the exercise, and again, until the whale was so exhausted that an umiak could pull alongside and a hunter could kill the whale.

This puts me in mind of a sea anchor, designed, I guess, to float upstream or upwind in a driving sea and slow the craft down, making it more stable in otherwise difficult conditions.

Where I’m going with this is, well, think of a bath towel, rolled lengthways, with the ends secured to stop it unravelling. 

Now think of a cord, say a metre in length, at each end attaching it to one of the trainers pictured above. 

I reckon this kind of contraption might just slow the Bok down sufficiently for me to keep up.  What do you think?

One Reply to “Nick’s runners… by special request”

  1. you havent just thought of that… I’ve now realised that’s exactly what is attached to your runners at the moment!

    Now I understand why you’ve slowed. Next week, we’ll spend a few minutes trimming your strings before we set off…

    hmmm – before Kim notices a pattern, I’ll point it out – naked – bondage – tying up – untying… Dangerous territory indeed!

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