Nigel & Kristin, as our lovely house guests over the Christmas break, may well report me as being a lazy git. And they would be right. The only time I went into the great ‘cold & wet outside’ during the three weeks they were here, was to paddle up the River Cuckmere with Debbie, Kim and them on New Years Day… a really still, flat grey day. This was the first time my little Kendo had seen the water for ahem… years, but start the year as you mean to go on… that’s what I say!
Since they returned to Seattle on the 6th, I’ve been hard at work catching up. The first thing I did was to go wimmin (that’s swimming for those of you unaccustomed to my obtuseness) for half an hour… although Kim swore that I was only in there for 20 minutes before I dragged myself out like a jelly. Since then I went a further two times, for 30 minutes and 40 minutes, with my muscles starting to remember the strokes that I worked on before my collar-bone was so rudely broken whist skiing three (?) years ago. By the way, does anyone else think that the lane-swimming at the Triangle is slightly over-priced, with the evening sub-one-hour sessions being priced at £3.80?
And since this is a running blog, I thought it would be remiss of me not to do some of that too. Last Sunday I ran out into the remnants of the cold weather and returned an hour and ten minutes later in the start of the warm spell. I did the 7.1 mile loop out past Ote Hall, the pyjamas, Wivelsfield village, Hundred Acre Lane & woods, Ditchling Common industrial estate, the Magical Path and back across the Common. It was delightful running weather and I even had to wear my shades.
Yesterday morning was so beautiful, it was almost spring-like here and we made the most of it by doing all our outside chores… although by the time I had washed the cars I was pretty much done in and the weather had turned cold.
It chucked it down with rain last night and I was not looking forward to running in a storm, but this morning dawned bright and clear again and it was a pleasure to don my running gear on and get out into it. Despite the ongoing twice-daily chi-kung exercises and the swimming, I wasn’t sure that I felt any fitter than last weekend, so I ran the same route to see whether there was any time difference. Alas not… the same 1 hour ten as before… 6mph. Although, to be fair, the ground was a little more, er, liquid than last week.
The sun was streaming into the house when I got back and I just had to sit and soak up the rays. Inside, of course!