Shortest day. Sunset and moon-rise.

I made a 'positive decision' not to make myself available for work today because, well, I really didn't want to, and it looked like the weather would be fine. The conditions that I set myself were that I made good use of the day; getting up at a decent time and going for a run and finishing off the article about Melanie Klein which I have been reading a word at a time for the last few weeks.

I didn't do to badly on the getting up. I set my alarm for 9am...and was out of bed by 10! Just an hour lying there dozing needed to galvanise myself into action. After a lot of important stuff - (playing Scrabble on-line, extended breakfast) I was out the door by 1.30pm.

Today's plan was to see what the Water of Leith path was like - if passable, run up to the canal, come back via the canal, cross the Meadows to Arthur's Seat and then run round it before coming home.
All the surfaces were pretty reasonable; mostly hardpack snow. This slowed me down and was harder work than a flat hard surface but was pretty good. It made my legs more sore than running on the hills but not as bad as road running. I wore my Inov8 roclites as an experiment. I'm kind of wondering how they would be on the Highland Fling. They were a bit heavy after a while (after they got wet) and my left knee was a bit achy but I don't know if that was the roclites or just the lumpiness of the terrain constantly throwing my feet around.

I got to the Meadows and then Arthur's Seat just as the sun was going down and then a few moments later as I was crossing the road at the far side of the seat I saw that the moon was coming up in spectacular fashion. I'd had a half ambition to get out last night and try and take pictures of the full moon and the snow with my better camera and a tripod, but hunger and cold overcame ambition and I forgot all about it. Now I was cursing my little Coolpix for its limitations. I was pretty cold but spent another 20 mins or so trying to stand absolutely still so I could get some kind of a picture of the moon which showed what I was seeing...

Just under 14 miles today. Shortest day over. In for the night! Its like the Wednesday of the year. We're right in the middle of the week but the weekend is now in sight. (In this extended metaphor, the weekend = the summer!)  Good to get it over with.

Haven't done so well on the Klein paper.