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Sunday 8 March 2020

The Funky Pants Challenge, 50 km, 08.03.2020


(and sing - in tune, please - in the fashion of the Teddy Bears Picnic)...

If you go down to the woods today you're sure of a big surprise,
If you go down to the woods today, you'd better go in disguise!
For all the pants that ever there were, have gathered there for certain,
Because, today's the day, the Funky Pants Challenge is running!

Every runner who's been good (ish) is sure of a treat today,
There lots of marvellous things to eat, and wonderful cakes, I'd say,
Beneath the trees, where nobody sees, they run and skip, as long as they please,
That's the way runners spend their Sunday.

Running time in fancy pants,
There are patterns and stripes and spots all
Running around today.
Watch them dashing through the woods,
And get all covered in mud through the day.

If you go down to the woods today you'd better not go alone,
It's lovely down in the woods today but safer to stay at home!
For all the runners from round and about, are running in circles, and laughing about,
Today's the day, the Funky Pants Challenge is conquered!

You may stop singing now. I don't know the rest (like Jingle Bells, I know there are many many verses, but most of them are a mystery to me).

Another great day down in the woods with SVN and a great bunch of runners, and a great deal of quite tremendous leggings out there today - great effort on the theme front! I loved this weekend - 2  x 50 km, and feeling good, so maybe there's a glimmer of hope I might not fail completely during this summers 100 mile adventures. Although, 100 miles is 160 km. All at once. So I won't get ahead of myself. 

Got a new watch, and today was it's first test. We are having some trouble getting to know each other. It's a case of, I'm sure it's very clever and helpful and really is quite easy to get along with, but how am I meant to know any of this, if it just beeps and flashes all the time? I press the button I think would be logical for it to start, but that stops it. I got quite interested in watching my heart rate for a while, but then that went blank, which was a bit disconcerting. Then I spent a couple of hours thinking that I was in some sort of time warp; it was 10:35 at the end of lap one, but that was 4.4 miles, and we'd started at 09:00, and I had (accidentally) found the screen at some point during the lap, which that said I was running at 10:45 per mile. Maths and time are not my fortes (I worked out my first ever 10 km splits based on there being 100 seconds in a minute), but even to my struggling brain, this didn't seem to make sense. At the end of lap two, it said it was 12:15. And lap three it said 11:48. That's not bad for a Sunday morning really, discovering time travel. By the end of lap four, it said 13:30. This was becoming confusing. I spent lap five (my heart rate had come back on by this point, so I felt able to think) considering this all, and pressing a few more random buttons, and then realised that these numbers were my average speed, not the time. Of course they were. Of course. Lap six was more successful, as I worked out how to find the actual time, which had been bugging me that I was wearing a watch, but didn't have a clue what the time was. Lap seven, I forgot to turn it off at the end, for about 20 minutes. But despite this, I still set 6 new records on my watch. Hurrah!

Fun weekend - thanks SVN for some great events, and thanks runners and well done to all (lots of celebrations this weekend)! 


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