A Run In The Park

As some of you may know, Johnny has been running a couple of times a week for about 18 months now - this was brought on by returning from Turkey full of kebab and technically overweight* at 87 kilos for his 182cm.

Although not a natural runner, he's stuck at it, gradually increasing from a slow and out-of-breath 4km jog to a fairly comfortable and fast 8k loop of Hyde Park. Putting this together with riding to work whenever possible (and self-motivating by monitoring progress on MapMyRun.com) has brought him back into the "normal" zone - now he hovers around 74kg.

After a chance encounter with a poster on the Tube (and some encouragement from Bec and his Dad who was also there at the time), Johnny decided to enter the Royal Parks Half Marathon, being held in Central London in mid-October. It would be a most fitting farewell to this great city, as the route takes in some great London icons: Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and finishing with an extended tour of Hyde Park.

A few weeks later, Johnny's old mate James drunkenly agreed to sign up too; in one of the many strange parallels their lives have taken, James had also started running for fitness quite recently. And so the stage was set. Slightly-competitive distance training began, race plans were hatched, and James brought his entire family down to London to cheer us on.

The big day dawned dry, clear and cold - perfect for running, not good for our loyal spectators! Bec kept warm by whizzing around the course trying to catch action shots of the boys as they went around. Here they are, still looking cheerful at the 5-mile (8k) mark, on The Mall before turning at Buckingham Palace:


At the 6-mile (9.5k) mark Johnny had to unfortunately resort to Drugs In Sport. Yes, he took a paracetamol tablet. Afflicted by ITB Syndrome, (as is James, you are probably now unsurprised to hear) his knees tend to become more and more excruciatingly-painful as distance increases. Fortunately the second half of the run was within the confines of Hyde Park, giving plenty of opportunity to ease the pain by running on grass rather than asphalt paths.

A big cheer from the girls at the 10-mile marker gave them a big boost, and they (naturally) finished with identical times - 1:49:46 - well inside their target 2 hours! Here they are with their wooden medals, and James receiving the adulation of his littlest fan, daughter Millie:

Johnny was barely able to walk for the next week, so this might have to be his first and last long-distance event, but it was a great day and fantastic to see James and his family one last time.

(*) Yes, BMI calculations are fundamentally flawed because they can't tell (heavy) muscle from (light) fat. In this case though, there was a solid 5kg of muffin-top that most definitely wasn't muscle!