Is it meant to hurt this much?

So Week Two of Proper Training with Ice Cream Sian and Fit Mark. Except an early morning text from Ice Cream Sian at 7.11 said that she was still ironing staff uniforms for The Big Cheese (humdinger of an event in Caerphilly) so wasn't going to make it, so it was just Me and Fit Mark who set off at 7.20. And I'd brought a drink for Ice Cream Sian and everything....

We were doing the same route as last week, the obvious point of it being to Do It Faster. I tried, I really did (well, ok, apart from the bit on the cycle track where I was looking to see if there were any nice mushrooms in the grass verges) (there weren't) but my legs just wouldn't work today - like rubber. Or jelly. I never did quite decide what...

And after about 3k I realised I was still carrying the drink bottle for Ice Cream Sian. Looks like I'd started Fit Mark's Penalty Packs without him even trying (except he's now decided he's going to call it Waterloo Water Torture). I tipped the drink out (I'm sure the bracken next to the path appreciated the isotonic properties) and spent the next couple of hundred metres taking my backpack off to get the empty bottle back in the zippy bit. Which at least distracted me from how much my legs hurt.

Towards the end I was watching the time on my clever watch thingy.... From memory last week's time was 1 hour 04 minutes. I was determined to beat it, but just couldn't make my legs go any faster... We made it back to Fit Mark's wheelie bin (every finish line should have a wheelie bin) in 1.05.17. Bummer.... All that effort, and I was a minute slower.

Except - hang on! I have a rubbish memory, so actually last week's time was 1.05.48. So this week was 31 seconds faster!

Yay?