Hearts

So after the massage, I gave it a couple of days, it seemed sensible, but I did a lovely walk at the weekend. It was mainly lovely because of the person I was with, which is another story, and actually wasn't overly strenuous. I did manage to do quite a few calf-lifts which were incidental to my recovery plan, but I'm sure they helped. I decided it was time to embrace the training plan the following week. I realised that it was going to have to be 4-5 times a week, taking cautious recovery days. I ran 4.5 miles on Monday night, and the new app, Runmeter, decided to work, and has deigned to read out comments now, which was lots of fun, and really helps motivate you. Especially when your friends have conversations with each other. Stella wrote "watch out for tornadoes", which I only learned later there was one going on 10 miles north of me. Michael said "The gentle caress" [which made me nervous], but it continued "of autumn makes running golden". I didn't go terribly fast, but it wasn't about speed, I was really happy to be running again, and that was all that mattered. It was Ian who suggested that it would have been possible to make a heart on my route.

On Tuesday, I had a work trip to Kent which I had to overnight, and I considered taking a run that afternoon, but technically, although the meeting finished early, I was really still at work, so I had to get the laptop out and sit in a hotel room for 2 hours of sunshine. I got a reasonably early night, and I intended to get up in the morning and explore the environs of Ashford (I'd located a river and what looked like a path on google earth) but six am revealed it was actually quite dark (owing to my usual waking habits, I had no idea about this) and I realised that trying to find a pathway in an unknown area in the dark wasn't going to be a brilliant move. By 6:30 I'd talked myself out of the idea - the rain combined with my love of the snooze button put me off entirely.

It kept up the rain in a consistent, British way, all day, something I could easily observe from the eerie of the 8th floor of our Ashford office. Happily the rail station is next door, so I didn't get wet as I made my way home. I did, however, have the chance to devise a new law, which I don't think I've even shared with Facebook yet, as I usually do when my Dictatorial brain devises something which I think would be good primarily for me, but also for humanity (such as shooting people who get onto trains with a cold). This law, perhaps, will meet with more understanding: it will be the law, henceforth or whenever my reign commences, that cars and motor vehicles in general, shall stop for pedestrians while it is raining. Whenever they should need to cross a road, in the rain, vehicles will give way. The reason is pretty obvious: they're in a nice warm car, and we're getting wet. The very LEAST they can do is bloody well let us across the road. I think this is a brilliant law, and should be passed immediately, even before I take over power.

I realised when I got home that if I didn't get right out there immediately, in the rain, I would talk myself out of it again - and I had training to go. "If it ain't raining, it ain't training" I thought grimly to myself (although I have many times been struck by the incorrect nature of that saying during dry weather), and geared up to get out there, including remembering a plastic bag for the phone. Despite my recent law, it appeared that not everyone had caught up, because I had to stop twice to prevent a car from running me down [sigh]. Again, my noble facebook friends stepped into the breach, in my somewhat damp hour of need, and kept me entertained with comments such as "Are you mad? It's logging your exercise as swimming" and "no need to shower after this run", and Ian, who I had primed that I was going to alter my route accordingly, filled all spare time with "Left a bit. Left a bit more" (as I was running anti-clockwise). I wondered if my other friends would get the heart, and wanted Ian to write "Can you tell what it is yet?" although obviously we can't quote poor old Rolf any more, not unless I was making a much ruder shape, I suppose. Then Ashley said "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not". I still haven't checked with him whether he had got it, but it made me smile a lot because I thought he had. Anyway, I got very wet, and I drew a heart. Because in weather like that, you've got to really love running.