Millennium Doesn't Run On

This morning L has entered us into a race, presumably I agreed to it. It’s at Caythorpe and is called the ‘Millennium Runs On’. It’s the 11th running of the race; it was conceived in 1999 prior to all that millennium madness.

The event is so popular that we have to park in the next village, Lowdham. It’s also very cold, the temperature is below freezing and we slip and slide down the side roads to the start. Could be interesting...

Someone in sprinkling sand on the start line, not sure that’s going to make much difference. Jostling for position is going to be very exciting right from the start, if you nudge someone out of the way they could go sliding off into the nearest hedge.

In the end they make a last minute decision and an announcement comes that this year the millennium won't run on. Cancelled on safety grounds. It’s a courageous decision from the organisers but it was just too icy to run safety. Yes, people run at their own risk but it would make a mockery of the ‘race’. It would become a case of who had the most guts/stupidity to push the pace. Might have been ok in the middle of the field but the front runners would surely have pushed each other until someone fell.

So we line up to collect our t-shirts for a race we haven’t run. I note some people do still jog around the course but that’s very different to racing. Perhaps if they’d been able to hang on for an hour or so it might have been runnable, as by the time we leave after a few coffees, the ice is clearly melting away. The most annoying thing about it all is that we cut our drinking short last night.

Instead I get home and head out on a long bike ride. L practically pushes me out of the door, as if she’s after a nice quite hot bath with her new book, some Christmas cake and the bottle of Baileys we got for Christmas.

I pedal for 65km (40 miles) in around two and a half hours, so not bad. Speedo says I achieved a maximum speed of 153kph (95 mph)! Which I’m sure wasn’t right, just hope it was right about the distance. It’s only 3 degrees but the weather was fairly sunny, although it went cold when the light went.

There weren’t many other options exercise wise because the leisure centres have pinched an extra bank holiday. Today is a bank holiday for those of us who didn’t get Boxing Day off because it fell on a Saturday. Our leisure centres took both, very sneaky, so nine bank holidays for them not the usual eight.

In the evening Derby produce a thriller for once. No really, it was a nail biter resulting in a rather beautiful 0-0 draw up at Newcastle. Of course, some people would say there’s no such thing.