Last night we went to my brother's to celebrate his birthday, as well as his dog's. Bruno was 13, my brother is quite a bit older than that though you may not always realise this 
The horrible weather had cleared and we all sat in the garden until late, with a few friends and some of his and our kids. There was good food, good wine and a lot of laughs. I don't drink very much these days but the wine was so delicious I had a little more than usual, luckily not enough to make me forget to have the occasional glass of water with it.
My niece recently started running so I asked her if she fancied a run in the morning. She said yes.
I was one of the first to go to bed and fell asleep to the sounds of the continuing jollity. When I woke this morning I felt great...until I checked my Garmin which said that although I'd had 8 hours sleep my body battery was only on 13!! Who trusts these numbers anyway?
Went downstairs around 9 to find my niece sitting in the kitchen in her running gear. Oops, apparently we'd agreed to go for a run at 8. Had a quick coffee, got changed, husband got changed too and off we went.
My brother lives on the outskirts of London so we had a walk through suburbia until we reached the park. It was a glorious morning, the sun was shining but it was quite cool, a whiff of autumn in the air. Off we went. Then I remembered the gradients. The first part of our route looks flat but there's a slight uphill slope. I was going so slowly and my heart was working so hard. It seemed interminable. Eventually I realised I was now going downhill so managed to get everything under control.
We did another lap. My niece and husband were very kindly staying with me, I'm definitely the slowest. I think they might have been a little tired too. As we neared the end of the circuit my niece hared off. I really didn't fancy doing another lap. She was so far ahead of us she ran back to join us and suggested running over a nearby grassy area. This was great, dead flat, close mown, lovely.
As we got back to the path her watch informed her that she'd run 3k (reflecting that she'd run further by doubling back to meet us). NRC said I had a few hundred metres left. My husband's watch was closer to my numbers than hers so we carried on running until mine pinged 3K. I admit, I was quite pleased it was over, but more pleased that I'd got out and run.
When I checked my figures it's no wonder it felt like hard work. My normal route has a total ascent of 6 km. Today it was 27m. And my average pace was about 30 seconds/km quicker than recently. All this on a flat Body Battery too - definitely deserved my sausages, egg and bacon for breakfast after that!!
PS my lovely niece confessed she hadn't actually been waiting since 8am, she hadn't come downstairs until nearer 9 as well, unlike my poor sister in law who had already been clearing up on her own for an hour by then.
