Worst Run / Best Run

My worst ever run? Easy. It was earlier this year and we were on holiday near Toronto, Canada. I had been recovering from a sciatic nerve injury and was just starting to get some miles back in to my legs. I needed to keep my training/recovery momentum up so I went out for what I thought would be a gentle 6 miler. Well, to start with I was running along trails based on a small map that I collected. The first trail was flooded and although I managed to get about 50 metres in, the trail turned a bend and I could see the flood water continuing so I turned back. So within the first 1/4 mile, my feet were already waterlogged. Plus the weather - really hot (90s) and very humid (80+ humidity). The next 2-3 miles were ok, steady pace on roads & pavements but then I darted back in to some wooded trails and things went horribly askew. There were a maze of trails, again mostly flooded, and I seemed to sample all of them at some point. Mozzies were everywhere and I was running through knee deep standing water. By now the humidity was really telling and I knew I had a couple more miles. Eventually I burst out of the trees on to a golf course. I must have looked like the Yeti as I laboured around the edge of the course back to the hotel. My Garmin Forerunner told me the entire route was a pathetic 6 miles (surely GPS must be wrong sometimes!) and it took nearly an hour!! The expression on my wife's face told me how bad I must have looked!

Helen (my wife) also features in my best ever run. While we were living in the US I was running regularly at the weekends and had a really good route set-up for a particular December morning. When we woke that Sunday, Helen did a pregnancy test as we had been trying for a baby for over 2 years and regularly tested when we thought there was the faintest of chances. Miraculously, that morning the stick read positive! We were pregnant. So after an excited breakfast I donned my running kit, Helen got on her bike and we went out together for a 10 miler. We talked all the way around about being pregnant and how unbelievable it was after all that time. As I ran the miles ticked by and before we knew it, we were back home. Probably not a fast 10 miler, but it could have been the quickest!