My Muddy Valentine
I saw a thing in the Guardian about how the selfie is just another sign of how we're all evil now and definitely doomed so I thought I'd speed up the process of doom and get it over with.
Chris Hoy Leg
Peter was off to organise the Water of Leith half today. I had bowed out of helping, not fancying de-stressing on a Saturday by sitting in a car pumping results into a computer.
So I headed down the coast to see what was going on at the beach.
Arriving in Gullane it was raining a little bit and I felt like I'd already been up too long so I popped into Falko's right away for a cinnamon pastry and a coffee.
After that I got the magic eyes. Peter gets them all the time. I had to keep stopping to take photographs of the intense reds of the heinz beenz trees and the singing orange and greens of the lichen on stones and trees.
I know you're thinking coffee doesn't really do this to you - but I hardly drink any these days and it's a better drug than you think....
Down at the beach you could see there had been high winds and high tides. There were clumps of grass hanging off the wooden bridge across the marsh at Aberlady. There were new ponds where there never was before. The coast-line was altered where the sea had chopped a new line around the sand-dunes.
Most markedly though the beach and the sea and the sky were just empty and deserted. The tide was way out and the sand was wet so half the time it looked like water too. It was like running on a big mirror.
I was going to run a tentative ten to test out the funny leg, but the funny leg was fine except once when I put the brakes on too hard and once when I was running on a significant camber. Instead I decided to extend the trip down the coast to Yellowcraigs and then run back to Gullane via Dirleton. As I arrived back at Falko's I was just shy of 13 miles on the Garmin so I ran round the green until I had just over 13.1 miles.
I was in a great mood - my leg was fine and it was a nice run. I stopped off at Tesco's and bought more than I intended. 5 bags of shopping. Then my heart sank as I drove up the road and I saw that the place was crawling with Hibbies. There would be no parking anywhere near the flat for sure and I had 5 bags of shopping and half the stuff needed to go in the freezer. I double-parked out-side the flat thinking I'd run up the stairs with my shopping and then go and park half a mile away in a Hibs free zone and run back. Then I saw a guy who was parked right outside our front door standing next to his car and looking speculatively at me. "Do you want this parking space?" he gestured. "Do ultra-runners shit in the woods?" I gestured back.
He said to give him a couple of minutes, which gave me time to get turned around and in position for a swift bit of parking. It was a tight space but I knew the force was with me and I landed it first time. Even as I parked carloads of slitty-eyed envious hibs fans drove slowly by giving me evils. Or maybe that was just their faces. In case you think my hatred of the hibs is anything to do with football it's not. It's just that they come and park on my street for their filthy matches and then I can't park my car and go home. And then later on they sing.
Anyway, getting given that parking space made me think the world is a good place after all. I was delighted. Better stretch, I guess and shower and all that.
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