Five runs in five days. All gentle ones (do I know any other way?) but until this morning, all good ones too. But today the white flag came out. My body was talking to me, and I’d better listen, it said.
Not only did I listen, but we had quite a robust discussion on a wide range of topics.
Yesterday morning I was up at 5:10 a.m., and out before half past. The earliest ever. This morning, my eyes opened ten minutes earlier. I lay there for a minute or two, gazing at those luminous numbers. Just long enough to ask the difficult questions (Why, when you’ve not had a full night’s sleep for days, are you considering getting up and running four miles?), but not long enough to be persuaded that the answer (Because I’m a fool) wasn’t quite good enough.
It’s still not properly cold. Not January Antarctic cold. But for the first time in many months, the world was at least properly cool. Mild frost sort of cool.
I got dressed in the kitchen, listening to the report of the Edwards-Cheney Vice Presidential debate on the radio. It hadn’t gone quite as well as we’d hoped. And presumed. Just 27 days left to save the world from the madness of King George.
Locking the door behind me, I noticed the clock. 5.15 a.m.
I’ve become the sort of person that my mother used to warn me about. I thought this as I loped down the road in my red shorts, luminescent blue tee-shirt and bright yellow Hal Higdon running cap. Always a bit unusual, now a fully fledged weirdo.
Nearly four miles, and I saw no one. Just the headlights of the postman’s van on the other side of the laurel hedge near Thatcher’s Farm.
Plenty to think about though. Nigel Platt’s heart-breaking message on the forum. I tried replying to it several times, but nowhere I stepped was solid enough to rely on, so I kept drawing back. I thought how small my world really is. How small. And how rarely I’m forced to go places I don’t ask to go. How little I know, how little I’ve seen.
The realisation may have been depressing, but chugging along beneath the stars, the only inhabitant of the planet, it was soon balanced by a renewed sense of wonder and encouragement about running: the great number of friends it’s brought me, the appetite, the doors it’s opened to areas I never knew about.
This was a multicoloured run. Deeply sombre in places, spirited in others. And though an accumulating fatigue finally forced two brief walking breaks on me, I was relieved to have got out there this morning.
Imagine a session with a psychiatrist, then going off to a party. To run at 5:30 on a cool, pitch-black morning in the English countryside is a bit like that. Yes, you’re the shrink as well as the patient, and yes, the party is yours and you’re the only guest. But life is what you decide it’s going to be, isn’t that right? I decided it would be a great party. And for the most part, it was. Yes, the catering was disappointing. But the conversation was fantastic. As for the music, well it was there if you were able to hear it.
He who hears not the music, thinks the dancer mad.
I hear the music. At 5:15 a.m., I hear it loud and strong.
