Half that will do...

The plan said 12 miles on Sunday, this was supposed to be my last long run before the Marathon but it proved to be a little too far for these two tired legs.

After procrastinating for the entire morning and most of the afternoon I finally got my act together and got out. I got as far as the driveway... my French car let me down again! I have a theory about foreign automotive engineering:

• If they make great wine or bland beer chances are they make rubbish cars.
• ...or...
• If they make awful wine or fantastic beer chances are they make really good cars.

Let's explore that:

• Look at the Germans: dreadful wine, so bad that Panzer's used it as antifreeze, and some of the best tasting beers in the world but they make the great cars.
• What about the French? Fantastic wine, beers that look and taste like coloured water but what of their cars? They look the part but under the bonnet it's a miracle that anything works... frequently it doesn't.
• Italians? Great wine and their beer may actually be beer but only in the broadest sense of the word. As for their cars? Fiat, need I say more?

After 1/2 an hour under the bonnet wishing for a miracle I finally got the car to start and I was off! The Curragh was soggy to say the least but I was glad to be out. I ran the first 5 minutes far too quickly, you see I passed a gorgeous woman in the car park as I was running out and had to pick up the pace! Why? I don't know, but to my horror there was another equally gorgeous woman jogging towards me so I had to keep the speed up. After a couple of minutes I was well out of sight, out of breath and about to slow to my usual pace when, to yet more horror, in the distance I could see another jogger. I couldn't make out if it was a man or a woman so I had to keep this ridiculous pace up. It turned out to be a fat bloke with a beard which really upset me, all that effort wasted.

I carried on at a more reasonable pace. By mile 5 I was getting really tired and struggle to get to mile 6. At that stage I knew I wasn't going to get 12 miles in. I pushed it to 6.73 miles and I was done! It took me 1:10 to run the distance, that's an average pace of 10:22. My maximum pace was 6:00, far too fast!

Here's a link to my route and stats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/1079520