All Those Moments Will Be Lost In Time......

It seems the effects of running the West Highland Way Race are still with me despite feeling fitter than a butcher's dog......one that keeps falling asleep often right enough, but a butcher's dog nonetheless.

Today I headed out for the gym where I had a treadmill session planned. I know that respected commentators on running often suggest that any action performed on a treadmill is cheating. I don't agree. It's different than running on a trail or road in that you're moving forward to overcome a force that's driving you back. But the fact that it's so bloody boring and the digital read-out in front of you taunts and teases with your real pace/height gained/time spent, it makes it a proper mental battle.

At least when running sans Garmin an 8.5 mile run is always 10 miles and your 9 minute mile pace is always 8. This is, of course, a given. Even the post-run use of Map My Run and the confirming OS map and bit of string tell lies.....that route is definitely 10 miles.

Anyway, I digress.....back to the treadmill session. There I am, standing on the machine in shorts and running vest. I see my reflection in the window in front of me and realise how much that feckin' race has taken out of me- I see a skinny tattooed geezer looking back. Think Spud out of Trainspotting.

I swear that when I left London for the Land of Jock I had love-handles and weighed in at 75 kilos (11 stone 8 lbs). I could bench press 80kg for reps and 100kg for a single. Now I wilt at the sight of an Olympic bar and reckon I could fight at my old battlin' weight of Light-Welter.

The telemetric heart rate reader tells me I've a resting pulse of 86.....WTF????!!!! That was down in the fifties before the race!! This reminds me of when I joined a new gym after the 2007 West Highland Way Race when the inductor told me that my blood pressure was so high I'd become a modern leper and was to infect none of the equipment with my explosive vascularity until I'd been given the all-clear by my doc!

WTF, I thought........I'm a fuckin' ultra runner!!! (OK, by definition maybe. Better to describe me as a fella that's managed to keep in front of the sweeper a few times).

Anyway, back again to the treadmill. Despite the frighteningly high heart rate I begin my session. Twenty minutes at level ten on the hill programme at 12 km per hour. Piece of piss.

Or so I thought until I was on the third hill, fifteen minutes into the session. I realised that unless I hit the stop button there was a danger I was gonna be dismissed from the machine and deposited behind it like a useless bit of litter.

Sweat ran off me like tears in rain (oh man....standby....I've waited an age to post it), and I stumbled off to perform some pathetically light squats. However, it made my day seeing the bloke with the 'Don't get big, get massive' top on. He was wearing a beenie hat....in the gym.....in the middle of summer....COCK!!!!

I realised that while I'm probably pathetic I've a long way to go to descend into the basement of deluded taudriness that houses Don't get big, get massive's collection of gym hats.

Anyway, despite my poor showing on the treadmill and despite my high heart rate (maybe it's increased 'cos Mrs Mac has buggered off home and my heart's leaking.
Cheesy? Maybe. Err.....Mrs Mac...that messy thing we were talking about....) I still feel fit and properly up for it.

Ready even to watch C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.

Laters.