Training

There is light at the end of the tunnel, but don't get carried away because this sunshine is only temporary! I am gagging for the summer to begin - so much to do.

I went up the hills for this mornings 10k interval session (strict 'hill sprints' are too demanding at the moment) in brilliant sunshine that even my weeping heel blisters couldn't diminish. It was a bit chilly in the shadow of buildings on the walk to the train station but the sun was soon high enough.

Today I had the route sorted and my times were more than reasonable for a training session - 1 hour and 1 minute for a 10k route, with over a thousand feet of ascent. The damage from Sundays long run was taped up so there was no pain but the dressings were bloody by the time I finally got home.

I walked fewer sections than last Thursdays first attempt and feel that there is room for quite a lot of improvement.

I went scouring the charity book shops of Malvern afterwards, but came away with nowt - the Amnesty Intl. shop has some Solzhenitsyn and Maxim Gorky biographies, but I was hoping for a little Marx or Adam Smith. Last time I was in there I picked up a great 3 volume work by the Polish writer Leszek Kolakowski and a couple of tracts by VI Lenin, printed in the USSR in the 30's and 40's.

My home town used to have at least a dozen decent second hand book stores. Admittedly that was fifteen or twenty years ago. Now it hasn't even one. Not one with a collection that you could spend time on. There is a second hand stall in the old market, and I've found a couple of books there, but they have very little in real terms. There are two charity shops that specialize in books and they occasionally get something worthy but it is so hit and miss.

Why is this the case? Where did all the book shops of my youth go? Can I blame the inter-web?