Windy sunday!

I was going to do a short blogpost, so I thought on saturday, about how weird it was running in shorts when I looked like an astronaut the week before (forecast was for 13 degrees). However, howling gusts of wind over 100 km/h greeted me on sunday morning. The whistling was so loud that my wife and I had to raise our voices to talk to each other. I live in a new community, with much construction still going on, so there were tarps aplenty dancing around. It's surreal to say the least to see cereal boxes and plastic bottles fly past your window, only to see the exact same cereal boxes and plastic bottles fly back in the opposite direction.

I don't want to get hit by IFOs (identifiable flying objects), I thought, so indoor track at the Y it'll have to be. I'd never dreamed that this kind of wind would drive me indoors, as opposed to a blizzard.

Feeling nice and light, I did 18km in just under 1h 24min. The track is only about 125 metres long, and it's difficult to get the balance right in the corners. My left achilles would start to ache a bit, so I lent less in the corners. 10-15 minutes after that, I'd feel a mild ache on the outside of my right knee, so would lean in further, and so on. I actually felt that I was able to analyse and understand what was going on from the point of view of mechanics and anatomy. There wasn't really much else to do except yell "boo!" at numpties crossing the track in front of me without looking. Amateurs!

At work today, a couple of offices had had their windows blown out.

When I got home, I had to clean up as well as deal with a piece of roofing felt and a tarp. The tarp was big enough to cover most of my garden. I folded it up and carried it across the road to the building site, wishing the builders "merry bloody christmas" as I dumped it.

It made me realize something all over again though. Being a fairly serious amateur runner for the past few years has given me good fitness and stamina which also come in very useful in practical, everyday situations. I love to push myself in races, but this gives me a quiet satisfaction when I compare it to similar situations a few years ago that left me gapsing for breath and a touch depressed about being so out of shape.