Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Today has been a day of two runs, a plough through Anna Karenina (lucky Anna) though still not to finish, and moving from group to group, chatting, in probably the most sociable day I’ve had here. We haven’t even just talked running, ranging from that to the EU, the metric system and the wisdom of throwing small children around.

Julia left this morning, and Chris and Rejean leave tomorrow evening, so my comfortable group will be no more for Saturday breakfast. Andreas has been joined by a couple of Danish friends who seem as down to earth as the other runners so I’ll not be short of company. Today we had a couple of other Brits join us, though just for the day: Charlotte is working for Oxfam in Addis and elsewhere, and her friend Liz is staying for the running and other experiences. A pity she’s not staying up here more, as she’s about my pace, though as she’s also running London we’ll see who takes bragging rights there.

As for the running, today was good. I was very tired in the morning, and not at all sure that 1m jog, 5m brisk and 1m jog was possible, but it was. I looped back on myself a few times to keep it relatively flat, and was rewarded with some 7.xx m/miles. 5 of them, in fact. After an afternoon of chatting and reading I slotted in my planned second run, and that felt good enough that I tried the 800m time trial afterwards, with a 3.15 not showing any improvement over the first one I did, but it was relatively easy and on top of a tough week. I suspect I would be better off had I started running twice a day last week, but I’m not entirely sure it was possible. Certainly I ought now to see if I can push the pace a bit, and it would be good mentally if that equated to quicker times next week, though it’s more important to keep the effort level up during what are probably my two biggest mileage weeks. Finish those in one piece and I really might be in good shape. Though everything is relative. I was in the gym stretching and doing some physio-prescribed one-legged hip bridges and feeling fairly fit when I realised that the Danish 10k champion next to me wasn’t just rolling his leg on the big inflatable ball, he was in fact doing the same exercise as me, only with the ball showing what control he had. Not a great description but trust me, pretty cool stuff.

Quote: (talking about suicide) “some people need to get a life”.

Summary: 57:44, 11.47k, 27:33, 5.30k.