I watched a video about Olympic Gold Medals and was astonished about the weight and cost of these things (in terms of raw metal). A “Gold” medal of course isn’t really made of pure gold but of silver with gold plating but even so, this makes a modern one (like those issued in London or Rio) weigh around half a kilo (or a pound in English)! Unfortunately, I’m not an Olympic athlete but that doesn’t matter because I’ve just seen a photo of the amazing medal that I will get if I complete 100 miles in August! This certainly is going to motivate me to finish the job! All the Awesome Virtual Running Events medals are amazing but they have really pulled the stops out this month with the Olympic themed August medal! Other running organisers take note.
So, I’ve done 89 this month to date and this includes the challenging Honley 10K trail race today. The label on the tin said “easy to medium” but I can’t on earth think where they got “easy” from. Don’t get me wrong, this is strangely my cup of tea, hills (up and down), mud to justify my trail shoes and the amazing Yorkshire countryside – what’s not to like!
With a moderately wam (17 degrees) morning with practically no wind, today was quite a contrast with the dead flat Escrick 10K last week where the wind was the main hazard, boy do I hate wind!
No bling last week or today (will they ever learn) but hay, 11 more miles in the next few days and I’ll get the Awesome 100 mile August challenge medal. You might think I only do this running thing for medals. You’d be wrong but, it’s a great bonus.
“Then Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’” Acts 3:6 NIVUK http://bible.com/113/act.3.6.nivuk
Firstly the good. Hasn’t it been a brilliant GB performance at the Olympic Games in Rio? It’s just one astonishing statistic after another; beating our medal tally at London 2012 (not been done before), coming second in the medals table and Mo Farah’s amazing double-double, the list goes on (& I ought to mention our track cycling team where every one of them will go home with a medal). It goes to show what well run and well funded elite sports can achieve; from a personal perspective it would be great to see the same being done for distance running!
After taking iron tablets for one week I did Temple Newsam parkrun again and managed to gain 40 seconds over last week. I didn’t really feel like trying too hard this morning which makes the 40 seconds even more significant! The sting in the tail though is that I now have to stop taking the tablets for 5 days to enable tests to see why I’m anaemic in the first place.
Marathon Mann 