So again, best laid plans and all that. Early night last night in order to get up to run early this morning. Unfortunately I didn’t notice, when I went up to bed, that a certain tabby girl cat was asleep in my son’s room ( he’s been at his girlfriend’s since lockdown)and,just as I was dropping off,she barged my door open and joined me in my bed. I love her dearly but I am an antisocial sleeper and I am always too hot and I thrash around all night - turning over and over and spread eagling over the whole bed -consequently we woke each other up several times until at 2.00 I popped her out the landing window onto the garage roof. It slopes down from the window so no drop.
Then I tried again for sleep but one of my lovely neighbours was celebrating VE Day loudly until well past 3.00am. Indoors but very noisily!! Finally dropped off but when the alarm went at 7 I thought “ sod that!!” Pressed snooze and dropped off again.
So I ended up getting up about 8.45 and telling myself “ if you don’t run you will be in a mood all day” and going out just after 9.00am. Well it was too hot for me already. 16 degrees Garmin told me later!!! Vest and shorts were the order of the day but I still struggled. After Thursday’s run, when I discovered the Iron Bridge was closed for repairs and ended up running uphill, past the Park and Ride I thought I would reverse that route so I ran DOWN that bit.
Good idea you’d think.....except the bit after that, which today obviously was the bit BEFORE that was a long slow continuous slope which I’d barely noticed when I had run DOWN it previously. This morning it seemed never ending.At one point I was trying to pass a girl walking for ages and felt j had to apologise for being so slow 🤣🤣🤣. The pollen was really thick in the air too and very scented so that wasn’t helping. I can’t nose breathe at this time of year so I probably sounded dreadful grunting and gasping along beside her trying to pass.
Still I got to the top and it levelled out for me to cross the road and then I sailed down over to the Park and Ride bit , resisting the urge to yell “wheeeee..” as I did and then carried on round the edge of the Park. One side of the park you run along a raised path,on a bank about 5’ high, which has the River on one side and a drop down the sloping side of the bank on the other. The path is fine to pass 2 metres apart unless you come across 2 people chatting on either side of it. I shouted “excuse me “ long before I got to them but they just looked up and carried on chatting. so I ended up running down the bank and back up again to get past them. As I came back up I passed a chap running in the other direction, having to do the same thing, and we exchanged eye rolls. Surely if they were going to stand and chat, socially distant from each other, it would make more sense to do it on the same side of the path?
Anyway, I carried on and under the pedestrian subway, back round the outskirts of the town and finished my run by doing a circuit of Pilton Park. I’m glad I did it but I could have stopped quite happily any time from about 15 mins in and I ran for 53 mins total. And I didn’t cool down or get rid of the red face for a good 3 hours again.
Still that’s week 3 ticked off. Let’s hope week 4 goes better 🤞
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
