Well, you can only put these things off for so long, I managed to delay for most of today, for a variety of reasons, first I needed a bionic knee, secondly, I needed it to be dark so no one saw me. Finally I needed to load up and charge the iPod with appropriate jogging tracks, as I wait for the green light on iPod, I start to get ready.
Now baring in mind it is snowing up here at the moment, so getting ready involved powerstretch fleece leggings (One of the main reasons it needed to be dark), bermuda shorts, thermal top, t-shirt, hat, gloves, head torch and a massive injection of psyche. As I turn on, tuned in and got out, the music started beating in my ear as I headed towards the High Street.
Now i was fully expecting to whinge about the suffering in the cold, tripping up in the dark on ice and punishing myself to within an inch of my life. Instead it started to snow just as I left, now again you’d expect this to make the conditions hard, but instead the music going around in my head, the six foot bubble of light from the head touch and the isolation of running alone at night, made it a surreal and almost pleasurable. If only it will snow every time I go out for a run!
That feeling of surreal beauty had almost run out when I got to the Slate Museum, and I turned into the wind and the snow turned to a hail blizzard, and it didn’t seem quiet so idylic, as my lungs started to hurt. Did it really hurt this much when I was a youth? I concluded that it probably didn’t and the pain was just a bi-product of too many years without raising my pulse above that of a Sloth.
As I headed up the hill towards the quarry hospital, the pain really hit home, and I had to fight to maintain anything that resembled a running pace. If that wasn’t enought I had to make it up the stairs to the quarry hospital, I couldn’t look up at all, I just kept bouncing from step to step as quickly as possible, knowing that the track would head downhill after that. The run back was slower, but I had my pace now, and it was less painful.
Will I do it again? Well I have a goal now, and I need to be as fit as possible for it. So hopefully, yes.