I have been suffering from a tickly cough for a while and in an attempt to clear it have been taking Antihistamine, despite the fact that it tends to send me to sleep the moment I sit down to relax!
On the whole it has started to work, but the exertion of running was always likely to bring it back… and so it was this morning!
It had been raining overnight and I chose to do a road run for a change, taking the 5.5 mile route to Clayton followed by the 5.5 mile route back again. I always have a challenge remembering the time at the mile markers, so I decided I would take a quick photo and let my Blackberry do the remembering.
In light of the sticky experience with the gel last week, I decided to test two things: whether it made a difference (slightly subjective as experiments go) and whether I could use it without getting sticky fingers.
At this point I had just managed to catch up with another runner, David from Hurstpierpoint and was finding the going pretty tough, particularly wheeze-wise.
In lieu of any sage advice on using gels from readers last week, I squeezed the whole lot into my mouth in one go and stuffed the packet back in my pocket before it could leak over my hands. 95% success in this department just left me with one challenge… swallowing the stuff! YUK!
I think it’s clear that the gel really did help, although by the time I got back to base I could hardly breathe. Still, not a bad showing for a muggy day: 11 miles in 1.42, 6.47mph or 9.27 minutes per mile, even counting in the gel-stop.
One thing you may unfortunately deduce from my pictures is that the verges of Burgess Hill are full of weeds and in need of more than a little trim. Is the grass cutter on holiday?