Category: Good Days

Heading home to my parents’ this weekend, I was looking forward to running down the road pictured above and out into the country. The scenery is probably nothing special to most people, but to me there’s a memory around each corner. On a sunny morning like this one, my spirits were lifted as high as the larks over the fields.

15 minutes in to the run, a Red Kite began circling overhead.

As I passed by Ketton church and down over the river and out into open country, I decided to keep going and make it to Collyweston, 5 miles away from home. It’s at the top of a hill but the climb was worth it. When I got to the cottage below, I stopped to admire the garden (pant unattractively) for a minute then turned around and began the 5 miles home. I was 2 minutes faster on the return leg and by the end was running a good half-marathon pace.

As I dashed down streets I used to walk to school, I felt 18 years old and invincible. In the hallway mirror of my parents’ house, I saw an exhausted, red-faced, 35 year old woman.

The jasmine’s in bloom in my garden, so according to Seals and Croft summer is here. It’s just the beginning of June, but the sun was warm enough at 6.30 this morning to raise a Meditteranean scent in the breeze from the suburban gardens of Muswell Hill. If I closed my eyes I could be in Menorca, I thought, bumping down a narrow lane towards a turquoise bay.

If I closed my eyes I could be run over by a bus, or step in dogshit. I kept them open and tried occasionally to glance at the budding blue sky with its wispy clouds, whilst keeping track of where it was safe to put my feet. I only passed one other runner today. She looked as tired as I felt, and her eyes didn’t even flicker in the direction of my face as she pounded by.

I used to hate running in the early mornings. On the rare occasions I did get out before breakfast, I would feel so sick or exhausted I would be incapable of going at anything other than one speed: painfully slow. I’m not sure when the transformation took place, but now I could almost say that I enjoy running in the morning. I don’t enjoy the getting up and getting out of the house part, but once I’m out, beyond the first five minutes of wheezing and creaking, it’s almost as good as any other run.

 

 

What a beautiful day.

I went to a concert last night so I got to bed late and was unprepared for my 6am alarm call, but even so it was a joy to encircle Crouch End with my weary gait this morning. It gets light so early at this time of year that the sun is already fairly high in the sky, even at 6.30. The day feels like it has been up for hours and is just waiting for people to notice.

There were a few other runners on the street, including Mr N, whom I did spot this time when we passed each other, though I pretended I hadn’t until the very last minute, because I am hilarious. He did not laugh.

I wasn’t paying much attention to the other runners. When I was thinking about what to write today I thought, ‘I’ll write about how weird it was that it felt like 10am but there were no people about’, then I remembered that actually there had been quite a few people, I had just erased them from my memory. Now I think back, I passed about six runners, all running towards me and all locked in their own thoughts. None of them acknowledged me, and I didn’t acknowledge them directly, though I did do a sort of half-head-nod of recognition, which is my London way of not being rude whilst simultaneously not wanting to intrude on people’s personal space.

I wonder if any of them noticed me? When I run, I sometimes feel like I am carrying my thoughts with me like a cloud of balloons above my head, jostling in the breeze, for everyone to see. I have caught myself singing or laughing out loud to my i-pod many times, and I worry that the same thing might be happening with my thoughts when I run. Can I be sure that I am only thinking them or might I actually be voicing them? It’s not unknown for me to talk to myself. I hope I am not getting a reputation as the Crazy Running Lady of Crouch End.

It’s probably too late for that.

 

A bonus (to me, anyway) of the three day weekend is having three chances to run. This doesn’t necessarily mean I will run on all three days but for some reason I don’t have a wedding or hen night to go to, so it’s possible.

Yesterday, without meaning to, I ran 9 miles with Mr N. We meant to run 7 miles, the extra 2 were a little prize for my not concentrating on Haverstock Hill and missing the turn off to Gospel Oak. I was feeling so good I didn’t mind, but Mr N was not, and did.

As I write this on Sunday morning I’m sitting in bed, having finished the crossword, with quite a serious hangover, pondering whether a run would kill or cure. It has to be cure. Right? In 15 minutes I’ll get up and get the trainers on and find out. To be continued…

So, I was running in Regent’s Park and who should be in my way but Barack Obama?! I know, I too was surprised! Wasn’t he supposed to be playing ping pong with Pippa Middleton, or barbecuing Nick Clegg over the cabinet table? Turns out he was in the Park all along, blocking off large parts of my usual route with his white tape, metal fences and armoured police with enormous terrifying guns.

I was going to take a photo to record the cause for my outrage, but then I looked at all the guns and thought, maybe not.  Even from far away, the policemen still seemed to have their sights trained on me. Were they impressed by my running stylings? I don’t think so. They meant business. And not that kind of business.

My run-in with the President, or at least, my run-in with his temporary residence in London, wasn’t the only excitement of last night’s 7.5 miler from work to home via the Park. Nearing home in a particularly urban part of Archway I witnessed what I can only describe as an Ice Cream Van drug deal. I may have been watching too many episodes of the Shield, but I swear that a group of youths were working as go-betweens between a Mr Whippy and dark-windowed saloon, and that what was changing hands did not involve any strawberry sauce.

This idea is gold, I was thinking. The plaintive siren call of ‘Greensleeves’ as the van approaches your street. The panicky search for mum’s purse to steal the necessary cash. The purchase of the two-ball speedball, the Choc-Ice, the Freeze Pop…

The clouds had been gathering for most of the afternoon. I have a great view from my office window, so great that someone once brought in a cloud book to help us avoid work more thoroughly. These were rainclouds, i was pretty certain (and heard it on the weather forecast).

Other than a few drops, I don’t think it’s rained in North London for about a month now. I can tell how bad the weather is by how often I go to the gym, rather than run outside, and I think I’ve been twice since March.

It started to pour steadily as I left the office. I had my kit with me, planning to head for the treadmills, but as I walked to the tube I changed my mind. The pavements were darkening and the kings cross traffic noises and smells were muted by the falling rain. It had been so long since I ran in the wet that I realised I missed it: the shiver of damp t-shirt on arm, the stream of water running off my cap, even the irritating drops on my glasses.

Of course once I started running it stopped raining within a few minutes, and the slick pavements of East Finchley weren’t romantic so much as dangerous, but it was a lovely run all the same. I could smell the earth’s pathetic gratitude for those few millimetres of water and there were fewer people about to get in my way.

I ran 7 miles, mainly because I wanted to run down this road in Alexandra Palace park. I’m not sure why I like it so much, maybe because of the trees. It’s peaceful.

Last night I went for the first ‘free run’ I’ve done in 10 weeks. I don’t mean that I ran up the sides of buildings, leap-frogged dustbins or swung from lamposts, I mean that I was free from the clutches of a training plan and free to run however far and fast (slow) I wanted to.

All trainer-d up, I stood in the hallway plugging in my headphones and Mr N asked me where I was going on my run. “Out”, I said. “Oh, out”, he replied, “I’ve heard of that place”.

It’s been great having a training plan to work to over the last 10 weeks, but I’d forgotten how it feels to leave the house with no idea of when you’ll get back.  Running just because you want to, not because you have to. Approaching every corner without knowing which way you’ll turn. Freedom is something I take for granted and experiencing it gives me a little jolt of pleasure.

A cynic might look at the 6 mile route I ran last night and note that it was exactly the same 6 mile route I’ve run many times before. How is it an expression of freedom to repeat old decisions, stick to the same established patterns, make the same choices again and again?

The same choices, I suppose.  That they exist, that I make them again each time.  Even if I take the same ones each time, the other ones are all there too. If there is a usual decision there must also be an unusual decision. With every extra mile that I start I consider and reject the possibility of turning around and going home, but that possibility exists. I’m not a quantum theorist, so I have no idea if it actually exists, but in my head it does.

Every time I leave the house for a run with Mr N, within the first few steps one of us will say, hilariously, “Ok, that’s enough, great run!”. So every run contains all the possible runs I could do, as well as the possibility of not running at all. That’s a big part of the pleasure, knowing that you have run when you could not have, that you made the right choice.

What I’m not clear about is whether this works in reverse. Could I could sit on the sofa, think about running, and get the same result? Maybe I’ll try that tonight.