Kenny to the rescue

There were four of us on my drive at 7:15am and Ken was all newly Garmined up. That makes three out the four cats locked on the satellites and capturing more data than is really good for us.

Having published a route the night before we promptly ingnored it and used Paul's local knowledge to take some footpaths directly through Southdown to the country side and picked up the lane I was planning earlier. Worked like a dream.

The plan today was to do the verulam lake loop, but with an option of going long or short way around the park. Dave and I went long, up the path next to the Roman wall and along the top where Striders start their races. That was a tough climb, accounting for the slowest mile.

Paul chaperoned Kenny as far as the Batchwood/Childwickbury footpath and then pushed for home.

I took three gels and needed every one. It was so cold, a biting ice-wind from Russia chilled you to the bones if you unzipped your windproof. However, with all the cold weather kit on I was in danger of overheating a couple of times and the compromise that worked was leave the gloves off.

Somehow we seemed to be working ever so hard to not really acheive much in terms of speed. Steady 7:30 min/miles down, 7:50s flat and 8s up were hard. Perhaps the it was the cold and the wind. Perhaps too much over the last four days. Who knows?

Anyway, came out of the Childwickbury path and Dave calls "Company", just on the up hill there is a bloke moving at speed. Clearly, he's not just done 10 miles - but all the same having someone go past NEVER happens to us. I was gutted, Dave was philisophical about it. On the Harpenden road heading home we clock Ken about half a click ahead and give him a wave as he crosses the road. Unfortunately, that spurred him on to great things and started the spiral of events. Choice now facing Dave and I was to either chase Ken home or go longer back out to the tree lined avenue. By this time I was gasping for some water and the last gel had not kicked in yet. Vision was begining to go and I was getting tingly feelings that I did not like. Gel kicked in and the three Beesonend Lanes turned back into one and we decided to go for the Kenny chase. Taking it in turns to peg him back we finally did it on the down on the common (Garmin clocked me at 5:02 going past him) but that did it for me. Had to limp back to Ken's for some water - sorry for waking everyone up in your house. Ken's missus reckoned I looked aweful and ordered him to give me a lift home. How embarassing!

Still there was a 1h41m half marathon before I blew up at 13.2 miles!