What is this wet stuff falling from the sky?

Saturday Dec 23rd 2006
7am

One of the better things about living in the Middle East and there are not many positives to be honest, in fact you could count the positives on the fingers of one hand and still have change.

One thing that it is hard to complain about as an “athlete” is that the weather is almost always great for training, of course in summer it is hot but if you get up early normally you can beat the worst of the heat. The average summer training session takes places in temperatures from 24 to 32 degrees Celsius.

Which brings me back to this morning, it is raining cold (probably around 11 C.) miserable and given that I have a marathon to run on January 4th, less than two weeks away and that I am coming off a lay off with being in Iraq.

Do I go out and run in this miserable cold wet weather or go to the gym, do a spin class in a few hours and some weights and then swim all sounds good and noble, but I still am wracked with the thought that I should be out running. What if on marathon morning it is raining and I will look back on this morning and curse the chance I had to run in rain.

Then again I can run long tomorrow and enjoy the gym this morning and have a short hash run this afternoon. Hash running is not real running but a chance to get out for a few hours run and drink beer and plan my long run for tomorrow.

The rain is getting worse.

08:00 am

Oh fear not that they may think of me as a fair weather runner.

I have procrastinated to a point where the weather looks like it is improving and after a second cup of coffee I start to prepare to go out and run.

Before you think I have sat around doing nothing-fellow athlete for the last hour please I note that I have done a load of laundry as well as drink coffee and type this entry.

10:30 am

20 km later time 1:53:17, negative split run, aim was to run as many at 5:40 pace which was successful and given the fact that 17km of the 20 were done with wet training shoes. At the 3km mark a large puddle marked the trail, and given that the area is mainly sand I took to the side of the trail and stepped into knee high water with both legs into freezing cold water.
Now I could of turned and jogged back home, claiming defeat and that it was a run that was not meant to be, so I pushed on at the 7km mark. Can life get any worse my mp3 battery dies and I am left with nothing to listen too. I prefer to listen to pod cast when I am running alone and thus I was now facing the double joy of cold wet feet, grey skies, and nothing to listen too.

I pushed on focusing my anger inwards and concentrating on upcoming events in my life and arguing cases back and forth.

I did push far harder on the second half, as the course is primarily an out and back loop.

Protein shake at home and a lazy day the rain started as I started to walk my cool down so maybe someone up there was looking after me.

4:30pm

Hash run over, best to say that with even walking to the start and back I barely nudged 5 km but was actually good to shake the legs out to a degree, as they were tight from the morning run

6:30pm Day Review

Total km today: 25km. Not bad considering what might have been given the weather, want to get the sense of how my body is prepared for the Tiberius Marathon on January 4th 2007. The only thing that will preclude me now is that if I have to go down to Gaza for more than a day if rumors are true then the word is that I may be back down there. That being, Tiberius is out of the question I just have to get through a few days without being assigned to Gaza, no one cares and I question why we would even contemplate sending a team down there. With no feasible back up, the ramifications of going there are too scary to contemplate.