8 January 2019 17,678 steps 17 minutes running weight 79.3kg
Hello darkness my old friend…
The dark of the night seems somehow darker at 4 a.m. when you get up at stupid o’clock to go for a run before work. As it turned out, the darkness was, in fact, darker than usual as a heavy mist had descended, thus eliminating any moon or starlight that might have brightened the scene a little.
Also dark, in a sense, was the air, quite warm at a touch over 20°C but with 100% humidity, the warmth of the morning making the very warm mist all the more eerie, and which felt like wearing a warm coat on a hot day. As soon as I began moving, the sweat started to pour off me and I thought this might set records for the hardest short run I’ve yet done. I was very glad then that this was just a short two laps of my double hill-climb loop I call ‘Burgoyne’ (named after Burgoyne Avenue through which I run midway between the two hill climbs) and which was over nearly as soon as it began, although it didn’t seem that way at the time. It’s astonishing how long a quarter of an hour takes when you are groggy of brain, struggling uphill in the dark on too little sleep, and without any real clue as to why you’re even out there in the first place.
It was tough going, which is a little embarrassing to admit given the brevity of the run, but it was done. It was a challenge of discipline as much as anything else at this stage of proceedings, but sufficiently tough given the hill climbs on the back of way too little running, so a pleasing enough result.
Strange as it may seem, it was a great to be out there again doing one of what is almost my trademark super-early runs again. It has been too long and I really did miss the buggers. Today also marks 36 years since Mrs MLCMM and I first met, so this morning’s effort made the celebratory bottle of prosecco later in the evening taste just that little bit better.
January 2019 ... here we go again!
