Phew

Yesterday's recce of the Calderdale Way proved a toughie.

It was still very cold, especially when we set off, and there was still a mix of fairly deep frozen snow and patches of glass like ice to contend with.

As we departed we met a chap from another club that Mark knew - the captain of another club and their top runner - and he (and his dog) ran round with us. That was nice but I suspect it did mean the pace pushed a bit faster than we wanted at times.

That was generally ok. The only time I struggled was on a 1 mile stretch along an icy woodland trail that climbed about 130m in the process. Along there I gradually began to fall behind: first 4m, then 5 and finally about 10m so I stopped for a wee and they stopped further ahead to wait. still felt zonked for the next 10 minutes after though.

Got home about 2.30pm and had a warm bath and a read of Stephen Fry's latest auto-biography before doing two more 'Christmas' butters.

The diet wasn't so good. Not terrible, but not so good either.

When I got in I was hungry and knew I needed some carbs and protein quickly. A milky coffee, piece of orange & geranium dark chocolate, half a packet of 'Pom bear' crisps one of the kids had left, and 3 pieces of bread and spread were thrown down without much thought.

Then, at tea time it was a modest portion of oven chips, lots of peas, a mixture of fried onion, mushroom and tomato and about 350g of fillet steak (half beef and half venison).

Nothing too bad, considering the run, but later I did have 4 slices of toast and 3 mince pies...

Not overly concerned though. I didn't log my intake but suspect I'll still have been close to maintenance, maybe even below. The scales tell a different story, one of overnight 1.6lb gain, but I know that will have vanished by the morning.