Sunday 18 March 2012

The luck of the Irish

Today's run took an unusual turn when I became part of a St Patrick's Day parade.

Should you ever run into central London and find it closed to traffic, don't think 'ooh, how convenient, I can run down the middle of the road and avoid all those people on the pavement'. Because fairly soon, it will emerge the crowds are waiting for a parade and they think you're the warm-up act.

As I turned down Whitehall, barriers on either side of the road prevented me from correcting my mistake so I just kept running. One man tried to give me some money 'for the charity I'm collecting for'. Another decided to vault over and join me: he kept up for a good two minutes, which was impressive given he was wearing a large green hat, smoking and had been out celebrating since yesterday.

I escaped the throng at Westminster Bridge and sought sanctuary in the cafe at the BFI. I had been toying with the idea of running home again, but got cold so jumped on the tube with a pasty instead.

On reflection, today was an interesting lesson in how the energy of the crowd can carry you through. Let's hope there's a massive crowd in Brighton and they've got an awful lot of energy.

(Stats: 8.5 miles; 1.45 minutes; 12.21 minute/mile; but that includes some time spent chatting to leprechauns.)

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