Another landmark today: 9 miles. It put up a bit of a fight. Not a frantic fist-fight; more a kind of sluggish wrestling match in which no one was ever likely to get seriously hurt, just, well, inconvenienced. I persuaded an incredulous M to drive me to a point exactly 9 miles away, where I disembarked with a sense of some foreboding. The car sped off again, and that was that. There was only one way to get home, and that was to take a deep breath and start running.
It was a good day for it. The recent cold weather has passed for the moment, though it was damp and foggy. The run took me along a fairly busy road, through 4 or 5 tiny, comatose Cotswold villages. Not much pavement to be found, so I found myself dodging the traffic for much of the time. It was rather a fraught experience. At the time, I resolved to avoid running on the road in future, but since the run I’ve been able to think about how wonderful the countryside was that I was running through today, and that it would be a shame to swap this for the featureless paths alongside the A roads through the town nearer home. Running through the countryside really does nourish the soul in some indefinable way.
It also forces you into gentle meanders through the landscape of that uncharted wild country at the back of your mind. For some reason, this occurred to me today: If you were a masochist and went to a masochist’s supplies shop to purchase a new hairshirt, would it be the case that the more expensive the shirt, the less comfortable it would be? And if so, perhaps I should buy my next shirt at a masochist’s supplies shop, as I could surely obtain a very cheap and very comfortable shirt….
