One good reason for running in the dark

Nobody is around to see how slow you run or notice you stopping to walk.

Today I’m 18 weeks pregnant. I look like I’ve eaten three bowls of pasta and they’ve somehow lodged themselves below my belly button. You wouldn’t give up your seat for me on the train, but you might consider giving pointing me towards a gym (if you were a total bitch).

I’ve been trying to keep to the plan of running 3 x 3 miles every week, and sometimes I’ve managed it and sometimes I haven’t. It’s not that I’m less motivated, it’s just that I have more excuses. Sleeping badly, feeling tired, needing to wee every 20 minutes (seriously), weird stretching pains. I could go on, but I really shouldn’t. Apart from the odd pains and the weeing none of these excuses are any different or more valid than those of all runners when the alarm goes off at 5:55 and they don’t want to get up.

This morning I did get up. It was dark, but compared to Wednesday’s funfest of rain, wind and dark, at least it was only dark. I pulled on my biggest running gear (now looking comically small), a weird belly support tube thing, and ambled out of the door. It was blackest night, even at 6.15am. There were no stars and no lights in the windows of the tower blocks. I skirted the busier roads of Finsbury Park, hoping for tail-lights and milkmen to break up the gloom. There weren’t any. Running up Hornsey Road, I spied a black bra lying in the gutter.

There might be one good reason for running in the dark, but there are plenty more not to.