Running Noses

Hoho, did you see what I did there? I wouldn't write at all but ever since I spoke to the lovely John Forker at the running club Christmas night out and he told me he reads my blog regularly and EVEN LOOKS FORWARDS TO IT I have felt a prickling of bad conscience about not writing anything. The thing is we ran home from the night out (or shambled home drunkenly across town - it was quite good fun) and saved ourselves a £12 taxi fare. And the next day I demanded that we run 10 miles in the dark hungover or not so I could make it to over 40 miles for the week. And the next day we felt bleak...but I put it down to working. Well Peter had a cold anyway and spent the week compounding it by cycling 20 miles a day in the cold. The next day I felt pretty rubbish but forced myself out for an 8 miler in the dark after work. By now the thickening in my head and lethargy was identifiable as a cold rather than a vague sense of ill-being (the opposite of well-being).

So we skipped club last night and ran round Arthur's Seat in the dark instead, throwing in 6 X 100m sprints just to liven it up. The 1st sprint Peter hardly got away from me. I thought I'd broken him at last. But after that every "sprint" consisted for me of that awful feeling that I was trying my hardest but actually going backwards as Peter shot forwards. I'm used to it though. We hawked and snorted our way back home and felt better for having been out.

Its a shame. We've avoided illness so long maybe we really thought we were impervious. The plan now is to try and rest up for the Dunbar XC on Sunday.

If my cold could speak, what would it say?

It would say I hate this miserable, dark, depressing time of year. I hate the dark, I hate the damp cold. I hate forcing myself to get up when all I want to do is sleep. I hate even the debate about whether Christmas is any good or not. Clearly it isn't. I hate all the Christmas nights out (quite liked our one because Christmas wasn't much in evidence), I hate the music DJs think they have to play. I hate people saying that Christmas is too commercial and then doing it anyway. People who live as far North as we do are clearly intended to hibernate and take it easy in the winter. We should be having short days with long nights of dreaming. We should be staring into the coal fire and inventing bridges and television and tarmacadam in our heads.

Oh well. Shortest day is soon and then we're on the up.