Chariots of Fire.

Oops. Not chariots - knees - my knees are on fire. I had optimistically thought I would go out for a run today but that's not to be, so I might as well catch up on some blogging.

After last Sunday's long, extremely slow run, I had gained a bit of confidence about going longer.
All you have to do is just go slow enough!!!

I had a dream in which Bert Logan from Porty, aka "The coach" told me that he liked to smoke a bit of dope around mile 13 when he was running a half marathon. I shrugged this off as being nutty, as dreams are, but then a couple of days later I had a flash on what it meant.

Bert was my inner coach!!! And he was telling me to take it easy, smoke some weed....metaphorically of course....I'm no advocate of smoking drugs. What I mean is the dream was saying "Take a chill pill" - well not literally, I'm no advocate of taking oral medication! It was saying relax. Don't do it. When you want to go to it....NO NO NO NO. Stop that. Phew.

Anyway on Wednesday I took Peter out for a longer run. And the sun came out and things were thawing up a bit and all the wee birds were busy, because their tummies were hungry.
They were mostly too quick for me and my camera.

Red throated angel.

Little Brown Bird #1 "You lookin' at me?"

Mr. Merganser with his bird.

Little brown bird #2. A thrushy robin.

We ran just shy of 14 miles and then I had two whole days off running before I pushed my luck too far.

On Saturday it was to be rain - all day. Michael Geoghegan got into my head a couple of weeks ago at my first Parkrun in over a year. He said that it was good to do a parkrun every fortnight or so. Whether that was true or not, it seemed like a good way of getting running out the way for the day. I had lots of things to do at home. PB was onboard. Onboard the good ship Berlingo. These were the views as we sailed into harbour.

It was raining hard and there was a freezing easterly wind. It all got so cold and terrible that I forgot about taking pictures, so that's your lot. I ran a PW but I was quite pleased with it. I'm pretty sure I actually ran better than I did 2 weeks ago, but the significant headwind on the way out made for slower times. Peter did a PW too.

So on Sunday Peter was heading down to...Berwick??? with Graham Nash to run a 40 miler. I had it in mind that if I could I should do another long run for the coming marathon. On Sunday morning I thought I could, so I took the first train to Musselburgh and ran down the coast with the idea of catching the train home in North Berwick.

It was meant to be a dry day with a bit of early mist - and for a while the mist looked like it might be going to burn off - but then it thickened and deepened for the whole stretch from Musselburgh to Aberlady. At Aberlady there were 11 miles on the clock and I had a proper stop. I haven't been in the Aberlady shop for a few years now. We used to stop there for machine coffee and pastries. To my delight they had cans of San Pellegrino limonata. This is just my favourite drink for long runs. There's something about the sharp lemon that picks you up and stops you feeling sick. They also had a very nice selection of fairly healthy  bars. I had a Trek peanut "protein" bar. (Apparently if you put protein in the name of anything just now, it will sell. Diet fad.) I had a proper seat on the monument just down the road from this and basked in the relative warmth and springiness of this spring day.

I never mentioned how magical it was in the mist. Especially after Seton Sands when I got off road. I could hear the sea but I couldn't see it. I could certainly smell it though! I think the recent storms must have thrown some deep-sea creatures on shore and they were now all rotting away. You used to get the same smell walking past the door of the Lobster Pond in Stromness.

I hadn't spent any time in the magical woods just before Aberlady in a while. Well we were there last week but we'd just come out from our boozy lunch-break and got moving again so we didn't stop to fool around. I wanted to replicate an old picture Peter had taken years ago of me pretending to sleep in a tree. To do this I had to figure out the self-timer on my camera though - and then get in position. 

I thought I'd done quite a good job until I got it home and saw my feet were still kicking about.

(look here's the original)

Everything was looking fairy-tale, so potentially a little weird and creepy. I saw this man (below) coming out of the mist and did wonder if he might be an axe-wielding maniac. He turned out to be nice though. I was taking a picture of some bark as he drew alongside me, and he said "Wonderful colours and texture isn't it?" Then he told me that he had heard the sun was blazing down in Gifford, and went on his way.

By the turn off to Aberlady Nature Reserve I was wondering if I really wanted to run what was likely to be 22 miles. My legs were already a bit shot. But that way is the nicest part of the whole journey and I couldn't really stand the thought of staying on the road. So I headed off into the misty wildness.

I had really wanted to finish the run by going for a paddle in the sea - and I wish I had really, but by then I was sick of running and sick of just about everything but drinking water and sitting down, so I headed straight up to the train station instead.

And then listened to families on the train on the way home.  

Last night my legs were very stiff as I went to bed, but then I woke up in the night and they were on fire. It's the same old stuff around the knees. I tried various things like ice and stretching but in the end I gave in and had paracetamol and ibuprofen, had a good sleep and they've eased off today. No running today or tomorrow and hopefully I can get away with it.