This is likely to be written in three stages. Right now it’s the morning after a big night out enjoying the beers of Middlesbrough and Stokesley, along with the culinary delights. The “parmisan” is a local delicacy, which I enjoyed in all it’s majesty at The Mill. To be fair, I think that the parmo is ideally be presented in a cardboard pizza box, but let’s not quibble. It was a thing of foody goodness. A slab of chicken covered with bechamel sauce and cheese. There are variants with different toppings, much like pizza, but we stuck with a fairly standard one for the evening.

It turns out that The Spread Eagle serves a pork parmo, apparently the original and superior meaty base. Next time I’m here we should try it.

Great to see Phil again after so many years. We were in two slightly different groups of friends when at University, but with a common friend in a Steve Cameron, who has been away in Oz for more years than I can remember now. So it was good to hear how everyone has moved on over the past twenty years or so.

It was a late night, though, and so things are quiet this morning. I’m promised a tasty Thai Sunday lunch before I head back to the relative normality of Ormskirk again. I doubt that I’ll be home before six or seven, so my long run might take a bIt of a hit.

The plan is supposed to be five or six miles today, with three 4M runs in the week. This feels like a step up from the 3 mile runs of the past couple of weeks, but isn’t looking that appealing just at this moment.

— later…

The feeling this morning reminded me of a Guardian blog article that I saw last week about marathon running. The author wrote about the marathon being something that forced him to consider his diet, what he drinks and how he exercises. I’m pretty much in the boat that he describes at the beginning, or at least I was at the start of last year. A lot of things have been brought into line, but I think that the regime needed to be able to run a marathon would mean that I’d have to change many aspects of my life. This is something to think about, but after the other day’s comment about a marathon in 2015, I’m seriously wondering if I should look at one towards the end of 2014.

— and finally…

I got home at nearly 8pm. I had to get a long run in 5-6M the plan said. I’d noticed that Lorna, who I’m running the half marathon with, had run approximately 5.3 miles in an hour, so I had a target. I wasn’t sure that I could do an hour given the late night last night, but I shot for 5.4 mph since I had a feeling I could keep that up for a while. Unfortunately I lasted about half an hour at 5.4 and dropped to 5.3 for the second half hour. Also I had a couple of times when the safety line came out – after about 15 minutes, and again after about 35 minutes. Joel came through and started asking about buying apps for his tablet at around 45 minutes. I stopped the clock on each occasion, and they were breaks of less than a minute, but they were unscheduled breaks.

I think I would have been fine for the 60 minutes without the stops. There was about 3 minutes to the hour, and so I put on Reflektor – which always works well as a pick-me-up. It got me through to about 1 hour 5 minutes. As it was an approximation, I’m saying 1 hour at 5.3 mph (but it was a little faster and a little longer).

I felt surprisingly good, it could have been the unscheduled breaks, but I thought that I’d feel rougher after the late night and the excess of last night. Now for some The Bridge and a bit of a relax. I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.