A run round the park and a trip down memory lane

Day:         28
Distance: 16.82km
Calories:  1,278

So it turns out that it is possible to fit five runs into one week. The last run of the week was a repeat of last Sunday with Jim and I again tackling the "3 Parks Run". After the disappointment which shrouded the conclusion of Wednesday's run we were both pleased to have shaved a couple of minutes off of our time from last week, no mean feat considering that Jim was carrying a cold and had, to quote, a "head full of snot".

The wind was against us for much of the time as well. It's been a pretty blustery (always wanted to use that word) couple of days and as we ran along the flat, exposed top of Peckham Rye Park a Southerly wind buffeted us from the side. In Brockwell Park the wind changed tack and decided to meet us head on as we were running uphill. At least the views over London's skyline that you get at the top of the park made the fight against the wind worthwhile. We finally began to feel some benefit from the weather conditions towards the end of the run when the wind helped to propel us along the bottom of Peckham Rye Park.

This run concludes week four of my marathon training. There's eight more weeks left on the Guardian's training plan and after that I have a few weeks of 'tapering' when I need to reduce the time and distances that I'm running for. Obviously, there's still a long way to go but I'm really enjoying the training and am feeling good (I've not needed to apply any deep heat in ages!).

Maintaining this blog means that I can easily keep track of the progress I've made in terms of distance (I ran 29km in week 1 and have just run more than 49km this week) and time (I'm up from 2:48 mins in week 1 to 4:45 mins this week). The audit of the last four weeks combined shows that, in all, I have been running for 14:44:29 secs and that I have covered 151 km.

As you may have noticed, much of the time that I've spent blogging has been devoted to music and the running playlist that I'm compiling. Today sees the introduction of the Foo Fighters. Although I was a fan of their early efforts a lot of what they've done in recent years has passed me by and I hadn't listened to them in many years until my Dad asked if he could borrow a couple of albums to put on his ipod. At this point, I should note that my Dad has fantastic music taste (which is to say that he likes much of the same stuff that I do) and his request meant that I drove back to Essex on Friday night with the Foo Fighters' debut album blaring out of the car speakers. I'd forgotten about the winning combination of hook-laden melody and monstrous riffing that the album contains - from the nonsensical singalong of "This is a call" to the hardcore of "Wattershed" this is a cracking debut album.

I've added a couple of songs from that album to my playlist, but the real gem that this trip down memory lane unearthed isn't actually on their first album. I can't believe that I didn't think about adding this song until now, but that oversight has now been rectified. Enjoy.