Wet Weekend

Yesterday it looked set to be dull but dry and I've promised myself I'll do a hill run a week now I've gone and entered the Carnethy 5 again. (Sigh.) I mapped out a fairly demanding run that we were calling a Semi-Skyline. Peter wanted to come too, despite having a hill race planned for today. Insultingly, I think dawdling along at my pace is a rest for him.

Despite the 'dull but dry' weather forecast, the high peaks were totally clagged in and there was sleet stinging  our faces. The wind was blowing harder than I'd anticipated too. We got quite wet and then quite cold.
We'd taken some pastries to eat half way round so I ended up eating a cinammon whirl and (oops, by accident) more than my half of a Maple Pecan Plait, standing in a stunted little wood on the way down to the Howe. There were quite a lot of fallen trees in the stunted woods. It was quite Troll Hunter. That isn't to be my new name by the way.

By this stage I'd already trimmed the original route, thinking I didn't want to spend my Saturday with sleet pinging off my face as I got colder and colder.
We went over Black Hill, and reluctantly up onto Bell Hill and from there I rebelled and did more radical trimming, running down to the road and on to the car park rather than continuing on over harbour Hill, Capelaw and Castle Law as I'd planned. We hadn't really run far enough to justify pastry in the wood, but to hell with it. I had other things to do. (One of which is wading my way through a paper by Thomas Schwandt called 'Three Epistemological stances for qualitative enquiry: interpretivism, hermeneutics and social constructionism.) (It has 26 pages and I've now read 7. I don't know when it's really going to get going. It seems to lack action and a plot.)

Today was meant to be sunny. I was going to run further than usual today as I cracked a tooth on a rice-cake a couple of weeks ago and I'm going to the dentist tomorrow morning and anticipating an extraction. I've run before just after an extraction, even though you're not meant to and it was only when I got home I realised that I had pink drool coming out the corner of my mouth.
So today was to be a longer run, and sunny.
Oh no it wasn't.
I drove out to Gullane as the skies darkened and then opened. To be fair it was quite picturesque and very atmospheric, but I couldn't take a picture as I was driving and I couldn't say I was looking forwards to more running in the rain. It had mostly dried up by the time I parked up in Gullane. My windscreen wipers were on sporadic. I got out and got on with it somewhat reluctantly.

I planned to run 10 miles making most of it coast. It didn't take long to discover that despite yesterday's run being slow it had knocked the stuffing out of me. I was sluggish and lazy. I thought the clouds would clear and the sun would come out, but they didn't and it didn't. As I was heading back along to Gullane beach from the Yellowcraigs side, I'd run 5 miles and  it looked like it was going to piss down and I had no oomph and no reason to carry on. I headed back to the car. So now I am at home again sitting on my fat ass and I am going to have to read the rest of that paper soon. To be fair, shortly after I got back to the car, the heavens opened again and I missed a right soaking, so maybe my instincts are good... but I think the sun could have come out as bright as it liked and I still wouldn't have wanted to carry on. Some weekends you just don't have it.