I thought Sunday was cold, but it was positively balmy compared to what greeted me as I opened the car door at Jack & Jill on Thursday morning.
Testament to the temperature was Daren’s somewhat uncharacteristic first question to me… ‘shall we go & get a cup of tea?’
The idea rolled around in our collective mind for a few minutes, but ultimately our good sense was overridden and we went for a run anyway.
It was twelve degrees warmer than my run in Sweden last month, but felt WAY more chilly and my nose physically hurt from the icy tentacles of the sharp easterly wind.
The normal route was undertaken which is largely sheltered from an east wind so normal hilarity soon returned to the dynamic duo.
As per normal we ran through all manner of discussion subjects… to give you an example, I likened our recurrent run to the novel (and now film) Cloud Atlas, with us repeating our journey again and again, facing different challenges each time but with the same key characters. In terms of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, our ebullience appears to make each circuit greater fun than the last, albeit with the occasional exception. Life is like that.
Unlike normal, the obligatory mud at the bottom of Wolstonbury was not appealing to take head on. We attempted to skirt around the issue, on account of the icy water in the deep puddles… and both failed.
On a day when even the tank tracks could not quell our enthusiasm, it was a small price to pay for such an enjoyable outing.
We finished the supremely hilly 6.25 miles (10km) in a characteristically sedate time of 1:15… although 5mph is actually pretty good bearing in mind our shared paucity of runs over the last month.
