Ambition outstripped ability/motivation/effort by some way today. The team were at 6s and 7s. I was pointlessly awake in the middle of the night and then slept in. Peter was somewhat hungover. I suggested we torture ourselves with an extended version of Water of Leith - Canal - Meadows - Arthur's Seat but P recoiled in horror and said he wanted to run on the nice beach. So by 3pm or so we started running towards the nice beach.
The wind was cold and harsh but the sun was bright. There were birdwatchers aplenty at the nature reserve at Aberlady, a pack of them rather comically looking with enormous binoculars at a tiny bush some 3 feet away from them, one of them announcing "I think its a Great Tit!" just as we ran past. We tittered. Ahead were a boy and his mother. A dog coming in the other direction barked at the boy and he started to cry. When we appeared behind him he worked himself into a frenzy running blindly this way and that and bawling and shrieking while his mother tried to calm him down. It was all a bit frenetic so in order to give the public a wide berth I suggested we try a path out through the grasslands that avoided the narrow tunnel through the trees ahead. At first this seemed promising but then we got trapped on all sides by marshland. We surprised three or so grazing deer who took off across what looked for all the world like the Savannah. It took us a mile of tracking and back-tracking to extricate ourselves from the marsh. (A 15 minute mile on the flat!) The day was not looking auspicious for long running. We had maybe another hour of light by this time. Down on the coast everything was looking spectacular. The low winter light was turning everything gold and the wind was now firmly behind us. We ran along to the beach at Gullane and then I led and misled us on some paths down the shore and then up through the woods. My legs were kind of tired from yesterday. We arrived back at the van with 8.01 miles on the clock.
That didn't stop us stopping in at Falko's for 1 x cheese tongue, 1 x yoghurt scone (I wasn't so sure about this, Peter's choice) and 1 x almond and sultana brioche. Eaten out of brown bags in the car while watching the sun set over the golf course.
Need to work on that running to cake ratio. The weekend is nearly over and a full week awaits me and I am avoiding the things I should be doing and blogging instead...
4 comments:
Those photos are lovely!
How funny (and what a relief) that you were feeling the same as I was yesterday. We barely managed 4 miles at Horatio's pace, my thighs were so sore. Ended up in Falko's too - for a cheese tongue and a yoghurt scone!
what on earth is a cheese tongue?
good question Happy Tom, its kind of bready stuff made out of stuff like pretzels and with some cheese like emmental mixed in...delicious...and they sell it at Falko's which is a German baker's and cafe
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