Training - Day 48

Blooming heck it was cold this morning!!! Had my woolly hat on and had no intention of taking it off!! As mentioned before, Joss had scoped out a brand new course and got the measurement of it down to the last few yards which is pretty impressive. That was the good bit. Have you ever seen that picture of the stairs on the top of a building where they have purposely got the perspective wrong? It looks normal at the beginning but if you use your finger to trace the path of the steps, it goes round and round and the beginning joins the end in an everlasting circle. Well, Joss had managed to replicate this but instead of the trick being that it never ended, the trick was that no matter where we went, it was uphill !!! Now I don't mind the old up hill section, but 17 miles of it !!! My only consolation was that Joss lost the feeling in the lower half of her body with about 5 miles to go. Seriously - this was by far the toughest run. There was, however, that fantastic feeling of euphoria as it finished and that lasted a full 3 minutes or so. It was at that point that the endorphins faded away so the full horror of the pain of the run could get through. If I were to offer to swap my hips with Karrsey I swear he would have the worse of the deal!!. Still, stretching and a bath has managed to ease the pain and I can now sit here rather smug that I managed it. Just think, on the day, I'd only have another 9.2 miles to run.....