It was the gloaming, when a man cannot make out if the nebulous figure he glimpses in the shadows is angel or demon, when the face of evening is stained by red clouds and wounded by lights.
–Homero Aridjis, 1492: The Life and Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile
Fantastic plod through a Berkshire twilight. The sunset was sensational, in the way that winter sunsets can be. Down here, all is subdued and frozen and hollow. But up there? A man could almost believe in heaven.
The running is holding up surprisingly well in the face of the usual onslaught — inactivity and too much beer and chocolate. I’m not exactly feeling strong and wiry and confident, but nor am I feeling the terrible burden of the plodder. It wasn’t easy, but there was no temptation to stop and walk.
My run took me through a neighbouring village. It’s just one lane with cottages on one side of the road and a large field on the other. It has real English rustic charm. Halfway along the lane, I came across a farm worker wheeling a ricketty wooden handcart groaning with hay through a field gate. His voice was weary, as he answered a question I hadn’t posed. “Last one of the day; nearly done now”. It could have been a scene from any time in the last thousand years. To happen across it at deep-dusk in mid-December was a delicious jolt. It was strangely affecting, and enough to make me thankful that I’d pulled those reluctant trainers on this afternoon. It reminded me yet again that running pays surprising dividends.
But why do I need to be reminded? Running seems to force forgetfulness on us. Just as we constantly forget how terrible running is, we also forget how inspiring it can be. It offers us those flashes of insight and opportunities for rumination that seem available nowhere else. I thought about this for the last couple of miles as the run took me past the lake and through the deer, scattering noisily in the darkness through the fallen leaves. The haunted, frightened trees. Eventually I arrive home, overflowing with gladness.
