Tactical puke pushes Peevers to peerless performance

Training back on track today after a shabby couple of weeks which included a hangover so bad last weekend I could barely walk, let alone run.
So today I was looking forward to taking on a 12 to 13 mile run, in the thankfully warmer spring sunshine.
Despite waking up in Dorset this morning to scenes of snow falling across the green and pleasant, by the time we got back to Bristol the conditions were much better.
However I had once again underestimated the depth of a hangover that was lurking round like an ASBO mugger in a dark alley.
Reason I’d woken up in Dorset was because we’d spent the weekend on my parents’ estate in the country, which was quite lovely. As was the best part of two bottles of red wine I’d drained while enjoying dinner with the folks.
As a result I was feeling quite rough as I headed down the tow path along the Avon from Pill and with barely ten minutes on the watch I was ready to jack it in and go home. This was mainly because of the feverish sweats I’d developed and the sense of nausea. The thing I really needed to do was chunder and hope that would reset the system. So, that’s exactly what I did.
Thinking about the times I’d been at a party and started to feel a bit queasy, I remembered that a tactical puke was just the thing to get me sorted and back to the booze. I never thought it would be something I would deploy in this far more healthy scenario.
Anyway, it worked as I went from being on the verge of returning home and collapsing in front of the telly, to pushing on and completing a 13 mile run in 2hrs 43mins. At that pace it’s going to be a long day in Edinburgh on May 26, but I’m glad to get half marathon distance under my belt at this stage.
Just ten weeks to go now, but I do feel I’ve come a long in way in the past ten weeks so at this stage I’m quite confident of achieving the aim of running my second marathon. Think I might stay off the wine for a while though.

Running on fumes

John Lee Hooker, a blues legend of the old school, once sang One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer. Which could have been the theme tune my evening on Saturday if you added wine and tequila and multiplied it all by several times.
All of which meant that on Sunday, my 38th birthday, for the first time since Christmas this year, I failed to go out on a long run in the afternoon. I have wittered on several times on this blog about how I’ve been able to sink a bucket load of booze on a Saturday night and go out running on Sunday, to the extent that I even claimed to be able to run better as a result.
Well, not this weekend, the booze got real. It was as much as I could do to walk down the shop to buy a bag load of necessary junk food and a giant bottle of Lucozade to help me come round, without fainting with the effort. In first few seconds after opening my eyes on Sunday morning I had very little recollection of the previous evening’s events and thought I’d got away with it.
Luckily Amy was there to enlighten me and inform me of how I got home, as I had no recollection, and then on arrival at home threw off my coat before then walking over it and tripping on it. Then crawling to the toilet, where the customised porcelain edition of the iPhone was put to use, before I crawled up the stairs to bed. It’s not unreasonable to think that at 38 I’d know better by now, but sadly getting a year older doesn’t come with an automatic software update. Not yet at least.
Anyway, it was all good fun. However, on Monday morning I tentatively stepped on to the bathroom scales, which was a stupid idea, as it turns out less than two days of mildly excessive behaviour resulted in me putting on SEVEN POUNDS! A whole HALF A STONE! It took weeks to shift that and now the bugger’s back again within one 24 hour period.
So tonight I was pleased to get out in the deep freeze of this ongoing winter and managed to get a six mile run under my belt, running to what felt like every corner of Banbury to make up the miles. I was pleased considering the self-abuse at the weekend, and despite the fact that at times I thought I could feel the whiskey sweating out of me. Very much running on fumes, the fumes of Mr Jameson and I suspect one or two of his friends.