I won't be no runaway

Day:         50

Distance: 7.48km

Time:       46:00 secs

Calories:  618

"It's Monday night, it's 7.00, it's ... another 45 minute run at 'easy' tempo"

Not quite as catchy as the old opening line from Top of the Pops admittedly, but I thought I needed a new way to introduce yet another Monday night run of this length and this tempo.

If that makes it sound like I'm bored of doing this run or of running in general then I should say that that is most definitely not the case. In fact, tonight could well go down as one of those perfect runs. An audit of the run would show that I felt good (no aches or pains after Saturday's long run), I ran at a decent 'easy' tempo (averaging 6:09 mins/km) and I was lucky enough to be running on a very mild night (no sign of those strong winds which we were fighting against on Saturday). Speaking of the weather, this is the first run so far when I haven't gone out with gloves on. I still wore a hat, but that's not to keep my head warm its primary role is to keep my headphones in place.

Regular readers (if I have any) may recall that I piloted the National's "High Violet" album as a ready-made playlist for slower runs last week. It worked so well that I did the same again this week. It really is the perfect album for this sort of run as it helps me to settle into a remarkably constant pace for the whole 45 minutes; the fastest kilometre took 5:57 secs while the slowest took 6:19 secs. The slowest kilometre was also the final kilometre but I don't think it was slower because I was tired, rather it was because that kilometre was run to the sound of "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks" - my favourite song on the album and the only song I didn't get to hear in last week's slightly shorter run.

I posted up a video of "Vanderlyle ..." last week, so for your listening pleasure this week I'm posting "Runaway" this week. When we saw the National last year this was the opening number. I'm more used to gigs where the opener is an explosive statement of intent (e.g. Rage Against the Machine opening with "Bombtrack" at Reading in 2009), but this was a surprisingly effective opener on the night. The lyric "I won't be no runaway" seems particularly apt given the slow nature of tonight's run.