Beautiful People

Sunday 11th July 2010

World Cup Final night – Spain v Holland. Also, being Sunday night, it is running-with-Anna-time.

Dilemma?
Absolutely not!

Running shoes on, and off we go, leaving my husband and 6 year old Luca happily settled in front of BBC HD.

We decide to run the 5.2 mile circuit over the Medway Viaduct, which is my new favourite route – Anna hasn’t run it before. The day has been unbearably hot and the air is still a little too warm for runnning, so we feel especially virtuous as we head up the hill towards Borstal.

Gossip and news flow freely and we speed along, feeling lean, healthy and good about life.

Suddenly, stepping straight off the front cover of Runners World Magazine, we are overtaken by a Beautiful Couple. She is petite, tanned, blonde and has amazing legs. He is tall, handsome and rugged. They are running at what seems like 50 miles per hour, smiling, gazing at each other, and exuding an air of smug satisfaction at their own incredible fabulousness as they zoom past us.

Instantly we both feel slow, dowdy, un-fit and un-cool. Hmph.

Oh well... onwards and upwards! We make it up onto the viaduct and sacrifice a few seconds to appreciate the amazing view and snap a couple of photos. (The Beautiful Couple are way over the horizon by now.) There is noticeably less traffic on the roads for a Sunday evening - presumably most people are watching the match, and we wonder what the score is. Running down into Strood we pass a pub and, climbing up onto a wall, we manage to look through the window and see that it is still 0-0 at 43 minutes! (See photo.)

Over the historic Rochester Bridge and we pass several more pubs in Rochester's cobblestone high street, overflowing with footballs fans watching the match (several of whom shout "Faster, faster!" at us as we run by) - still 0-0. Then the usual, painful uphill mile home.

Still 0-0, but we are back in time to watch the rest of the second half and Iniesta's fantastic 116th minute victory goal.

Distance run (in miles): 5.2

The following morning I was able to grab an hour at the gym and ran just over 9Km (5.6 miles) on the treadmill.

Distance run (in miles): 5.6

Total mileage this week: 10.8
Total mileage for July: 33.1
Total since starting blog: 83.1