Near Dark

Dawn Run? Guess Again.

Someone should have told me or reminded me or something. You start marathon training, you get into these longer runs, and suddenly you discover a whole world of lazy. I didn't want to lift a finger on Sunday, but I was in denial about this. I kept finding reasons to put off our run and swim until later.

I'm sure it's one of these polarities that emerge in most relationships but I tend to earliness and PB leans on the side of late. Yesterday I dropped the earliness ball and so it was we found ourselves at 5pm at Evan's Cycles still planning to go to Gullane to run and then to swim. The sun was setting just as we arrived at Gullane. We set off on a short run. It seemed unbearable to give up completely. 1.6 miles in the bag!

I'd been telling Peter that what we should do is just run in the water in our swimsuits and run out again and let that be our submerging activity for this week. Julia Henderson, who has also been swimming every week, but through in the West, had posted photos of her and her pals in swimsuits in a loch somewhere earlier in the day. He didn't fancy it and when it came down to it, neither did I. In fact "fancy" didn't describe any of my feelings at all. It was with a now familiar dread I pulled on my cold rubbery suit and made, penguin style, for the shore.

The water was a balmy 6 degrees, according to our scientific measuring device...but the blasted wind from the West was a lot colder. We swam a little bit. There was no real way of knowing if you were making any headway or not. I was very careful to stay in water that was shallow enough so that I could touch the bottom with my hand if need be. Then we called it a day. It was hard getting changed in the car in the dark.

So all we had left to do then was go a Tesco's shop and drop off a loaf at Peter's mum's house, then get showers and hose down our wetsuits. It was after 9pm when I had my tea. Which is too late. And I'm supposed to be out running again right now, but instead I'm cowering indoors next to a nice warm computer as a grey looking rain drums on the window. Hell's teeth. I wish it was the summer. I better go.