Friday, May 15, 2020

Frosty Start Sunny Later for the Belties




     Three main photos today by www.jacquelinerackhamphotography.com


Frosty Start Sunny Later for the Belties.

It is mid May for goodness sake. I have planted all sorts of useful vegetables, so I was a bit alarmed when at the start of our day when Steve came in and said he had been clearing the frost off the car windscreen ready for our departure for our early run. We are at a point when we will have maximum light for the next two months or more so FROST is not something that is expected. Still, at those times when the unexpected weather occurs I usually just shrug and say “This is England, what do you expect”, to myself.

It was still quite dark when our alarm clock went off but by the time we had cleaned our teeth, got dressed into running kit and had a cuppa and climbed in the car ready to leave, it was much lighter. We caught the first flash of sunlight on the way to our run start as the ball of fire just peeped momentarily at us en route.

Steve had planned a variation to the route, and after parking up in the same old spot, we started off on the narrow lane back in the direction we had driven the last mile. Just before we got back to the main road we took the footpath on the left heading east through the woods. It was half a mile or so along that path that Steve realised that he had not started the Garmin off to record our tracks and since the new part of the route was the section we had just covered it meant that there would be no point in downloading the run because the rest of it would be roughly the same as we ran on Wednesday.
It was however, our third 8 mile run in a row making 24 miles in 5 days and thirty miles in a week, so we were very happy with that. Happy that is, apart from the fact that unhappily, we had an email yesterday to say that Ironman 70.3 Graz, that would have been on this Sunday week, the 24th of May, had not surprisingly been officially postponed until the same weekend in 2021. So our present race honed fitness was like being all dolled up with nowhere to go. It’s the same for everybody though and the Graz race organisers had made a choice of offers either to transfer on to the 2021 date or to move your entry to a choice of three other European destinations with dates now showing during this coming autumn on a limited first come first served basis. Still a great game plan that should please nearly everybody.
Rapperswil-Jona 13th September.
Westfriesland 4th October.
Luxembourg 11th October.

This also means that keeping our fitness level going does have some point, other than it simply being a fun lifestyle that keeps us as a happy and out of mischief on most days.
 
During our quite delightful, if surprisingly cold run this morning, as the frost only started clearing as the sun struck each patch of earth. We were both glad that we had still worn gloves. At the distant point where we turned for a loop of the top end of Patching village we met three mountain bikers riding up towards us. I called out “Is this on the two from the same household plus one friend rule”? The last man shouted back “Its Dad and two kids”. Big kids I have to say.


That encounter, was just before the cardboard cut-out of our Prime Minister that I reported the other day standing by somebody's front door. Even though that image is of ‘Our Boris’ at a lighter weight. It is no competition to the cardboard cut-out that had stood the ravages of time, outside our business warehouse, where we have a very fit looking Franz Klammer. Don’t ask what a great and exciting ski star like Klammer is doing outside our door at work. There is no sensible reason for that. Franz Klammer is a former champion alpine ski racer from Austria. Klammer overwhelmingly dominated the downhill event for four consecutive World Cup seasons. He was the gold medalist at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck.

Olympic medalist Franz Klammer a big ski hero of ours
 
The most pleasing happening today was that at the end of our run we bumped into my photographer daughter Jacqueline and her husband Martin who was later to deliver our click and collect food order too. They were accompanied by young Jeffrey their handsome puppy who seemed very pleased for the excuse to round in a few more happy circles around us.



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