We all spend a lot of time inside, out of the weather: our homes, offices, cars, shops etc each place a roof over our head, a barrier to the weather outside. One of the things that was most striking about the Vipassana meditation retreat that I attended last year was having time to immerse myself in the weather: to be able to think about it, listen to it, revel in the wind and the rain. It helped that it was January and there were lots of weather fronts sweeping through to demonstrate their power.
This morning there was an ever so gentle rain falling and the raindrops were caressing my face the whole way round. It was a truly delightful sensation.
I wasn’t quite sure how I would feel after not running for over a week. I helped Debbie & John to dig a hole in their garden last Saturday as part of their pond redevelopment: it was only 2.5 feet square by 3 feet deep but past the luscious top-soil, it was thick, heavy London clay, so heavy that I could hardly lift a small spade-full of it above my shoulders (my work boots, above, both weighed me down and stuck to the ground!). The combination of this with some most inclement weather disinclined me to run Sunday [please see comment below]. This week was then very busy, added to which Nick has been poorly and quite sensibly decided not to run.
So it was just me striding out this morning, which was a shame as it would have been fun watching the Bok trying to avoid the gorgeous, squelchy, wall-to-wall mud! In the same way that the Inuits have quite precise descriptions for different types of snow and ice, so I might describe the going today as a good structure of firm mud with large pockets or areas of wet surface mud: my trainers came back wet but not clogged and thus got a wash off and are now drop-dripping outside… I had actually forgotten that they were disco shoes!
Cutting to the chase, the overall time was one hour, one minute for 6.7 miles (6.6mph), but it was interesting that after 45 minutes I decided to increase the pace and managed to change it from a comfortable 7mph, for the distance prior to that, to a breathy 5.25mph for the distance home. Yes, you read that right: I actually slowed down! Go figure!
