This afternoon I went for my first long weekend run around Maidenhead. A pleasant three-lap circuit in cool, damp air, taking in both open fields and suburbia. The run was completed with a minimum of fuss, the only downer being that I miscalculated the lap distance as 3.1 miles when it was only really 2.5.

My watch showed around 22 minutes for the first lap, and I immediately thought that I’d got the distance wrong. However, maybe delirium began to set in after a few more miles, as I began to believe that I really was running that fast – despite, as I later worked out, the pace being faster than I’ve ever run. When I finally checked the map, I wasn’t really disappointed that I hadn’t improved a minute per mile overnight - just that I hadn’t run as far as I intended.

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