Despite Monday being a bank holiday, this week mysteriously felt really long. On Wednesday I was really struggling to remember that it wasn’t Friday. Also, as predicted, the weather’s gone from “why is it still so cold” to “it’s too hot”.
On Friday I saw some vague chatter about the possibility of seeing an aurora across the UK, but was convinced that it wouldn’t come to anything, or at the very least would constitute a few faint coloured streaks if you looked really hard. I went to bed early, slept well, and woke up to find social media filled with all my friends posting amazing photos from their back gardens. Oh well, that’ll teach me. Mind you, I get the impression it looked far more impressive in photos than in real life, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.
Saturday was the Twilight 5k, a very flat fast race round the Ipswich waterfront, and surprisingly one of the very few local 5k events. It was the scene of my one and only sub-20 time (19:19 – I’m still not sure how that happened!), back in 2019, which after trying for several years would have finally qualified me for the fast wave, but then they switched to just asking for an estimated time, and of course Covid put paid to it for a while. This year the fast wave was tightened up to sub-19, so I think I can give up any hope of a chance to be the slowest of the fast people, but I was kind of hopeful of finally getting under 20 again. I even skipped parkrun in the morning, for the first time in 18 months or so, but alas it wasn’t to be, with a stitch after the first lap putting paid to any hope of maintaining the required pace. I ended up with 20:19, which was a bit disappointing, although it turns out that’s not far off a 75% age graded time, so I can’t really complain.
After a few post-race beers I went home to bed, getting up a couple of times in case the aurora made a second appearance. Predictably, it didn’t, other than a possible vaguely greenish tinge to the sky at one point.
Thanks to some typically poor race-entering admin on my behalf, I then had to get up for the Stephen Williams 10k on Sunday morning. For some reason the weather at this event is always really warm, and this year continued the trend (although nothing like as hot the first year it took place). I managed to drag my tired legs round in just under 46 minutes. I decided that it’s officially summer, and risked opening my sunroof for the drive home, for the first time since mid November when I replaced the one that got stuck half-open. Pleased to report smooth operation, although to be fair I haven’t actually tried closing it again yet.