With a three-hour project management exam looming large on the horizon tomorrow I felt it was important to get out for a run, despite the fact that the weather was really warm and very close… my notes (I’m writing this, ahem, three weeks later!) say that it was almost raining!
I decided to run the normal short route, with a few tweaks to miss the stinging nettles that I have been wading through lately. The major tweak was that I ran the route in the opposite direction… something that I cannot remember doing before, thought I find that hard to believe after all these years!
Inevitably my feet were drawn to different tracks and I found myself out on Hundred Acre Lane and then running down a path to the middle of Wivelsfield.
Those of you who have followed my blog over the long-term will know that I have a Jekyll & Hyde approach to mud. In the summer I tend to avoid it, going to great lengths to keep my runners dry, but in the winter I relish running through the thick of it.
Thus, in the midst of my summer run, with dry trainers, my first thought when I came upon a big muddy patch across the path was to run round it. However there were two couples carefully picking their way around the margins, one on each side.
The opportunity to play to the crowd was far too appealing and I splashing noisily through the worst of the puddle, leaving big smiles on both sides in my wake!
One of the couples took a short-cut across the fields and I caught them up again on the other side having run the long way around. Curious about the other characters I’d just passed by the side of the road I stopped to chat… it was the village day yesterday and I learned that there were 20 or more different people represented around the area.
My serotonin levels refreshed I returned home. The run was 6 miles, completed in 65 minutes… 5.5 mph average. And muddy runners!