5/12/15 – Didn’t we have a Lovely time…

The best laid plans often have a habit of biting you on the backside.

Here we are just down the road from Bangor being battered on all sides by Storm Desmond. Keen as I am to find out whether Wednesday’s time was a one-off, the local Parkrun has been called off due to the excessively high winds and torrential rain. Shame, it looked like a really nice (i.e. flat) route around the Castle.

It really is a filthy day. The scene below took place this morning less than a mile from our hotel after the Afon Seoint burst it’s banks and swamped the road.

The people in the car are actually staying in our hotel, luckily they were okay, although we’ve not seen their car since.

Being unable to get out to run, we headed for the hotel gym and a chance to renew my love-hate relationship with the treadmill.

When I worked in the City, the treadmill was often the only realistic option to get a midweek run under the belt. Whilst I always seem to run a bit faster on a treadmill – once I even managed to break 27 minutes for 5K, albeit by one second – I find it difficult to stay motivated. The option to hang on to the bars, under the pretext of checking heartrate, is sometimes too strong to resist.

It’s hard on the old knees too, although I always set a small incline which seems to help a bit.  Despite all that, being able to set a pace seems to force me to run that bit faster. With a 2 minute walking warm-up and little bit of ‘heart-rate monitoring’, I manage 5k in the exact same time as Wednesday. Really not sure what can be inferred from that, though.

The tightness at the back of both legs is still there, too and nowhere suitable to do those stretches. Meanwhile, there’s Desmond to be braved as we go out in search of Welsh Cup footie action, with Palace not in action until Monday night at Everton.