After weeks of trying to match diaries, the Bok duly turned up this morning at the allotted time for a quick run. The weather seemed relatively mild to me, but he must have been under the weather as he was adament it was freezin’, so much so that he had his gloves on. He was sufficiently adamant to persuade me to wear my gloves too,
We set out, with him getting his excuses in early… pain in the back, pain in the knee, pain in the ar… oh no, that was the fact that the mini-Boks had woken him up five times the night before! Bearing in mind all the pain and tiredness he was exuding, I was surprised that he still wanted to rush off like a racehorse on oats… although I reined him in and we settled into a more leisurely pace!
We ran an old favourite route, out past the Royal Oak to Wivelsfield, through the woods to Ditchling Industrial Estate, down the magical path & back across the common. I quickly removed my gloves as it was much warmer than I had been lead to believe… which correlates (strangely) to the fact that later, over breakfast, he confessed that he had sweated buckets, putting it down to how fast we had run!
What nonsense! He was still sweating when I saw him last night and it was plainly that he was overdressed for the weather, trussed up as he was in a three peice suite. I’m kidding, of course… no-one can wear more than a chair in these troubled times.
We we half way through the wood when I heard the first Beep beep beep BEEP, the telltale sign that his heart rate was elevated… and this on a flat section. I duly increased my speed and was rewarded with a muffled expletive and a further two renditions from his heart rate monitor. To be fair though, despite the beeps and the fact I was running straight through all the mud and he way tiptoeing around the edges (well okay, strategic mud-hopping), he kept up pretty well!
Along the magical path, which is also more or less flat, I once again heard the telltail Beep beep beep BEEP and I once again increased the pace. You may think I am being very unkind, but there are some unwritten laws (well, actually they are not even unwritten now, are they?) and this is one of them. Snigger snigger!
Over breakfast, which was achieved after running 5.2 miles in 45 minutes (6.9mph), he probabaly consumed more than the 658 calories he reckons to have burned off.