Today was one of those days where, if it wasn’t for Janathon, I would have done nothing. The plan was to run with my friend, but she wasn’t able to make it and I remembered that it was only polite to visit my sister’s Mr on his birthday. It would have been so easy to go visiting and then go home for tea.

However, Janathon duty calls and I found myself dressed like the Milk Tray man (black tights, black thermal top) but delivering a nice shiraz instead of over-sweet chocolates. Ginge shoved me out of the car at the top of the road and I ran home dressed like the Milk Tray man with an over zealous health and safety risk assessor (black tights, black thermal top, hi-vis bib).

It’s a route that takes me through the less salubrious end of town (having said that, every other unit in the town centre seems to be a pound shop, so I’m not sure that’s saying a great deal) and was mainly downhill until my nemesis hill on the way back into the village. Compare and contrast our running club leader’s idea of “mainly downhill” with my idea of “mainly downhill”.

 

Needless to say, this route helped me to go at a fairly decent lick. On the uphill into the village I heard an owl. It’s an appropriate place to hear an owl (next to the nature reserve, plenty of trees), but I started to doubt myself and wondered what if it’s not an owl, maybe it’s someone pretending to be an owl. With some kind of owl hoot apparatus. Maybe as a part of a pirate/smuggling escapade. It was probably just an owl.

Day 11/31 –3.1 miles

Ferrero rochers burned

When I ran early last week, I was relieved that I would only be doing early Janathon once a week. So why is it that a mere 5 days later, I’m up again for the first of 3 morning runs this week?

The main reason that I’m finding Janathon a lot harder than Juneathon is that there’s far more daylight in June than Jan. During last year’s Juneathon, 6/7 of the first week’s runs were done before 8.00 (setting off between 6:10 and 7:41), whereas it’s still dark at 8.00 at the moment. I’m enjoying my weekend daylight runs, but by the time that it’s light and I’ve faffed around prepared, run, faffed around, recovered, showered and changed, it feels like half the daylight hours have been lost. Add in the tweeting, blog  writing and (brilliant)  blog reading and it’s a wonder that Ginge is still speaking to me.

Which is why I find that I’m facing 3 early ones this week.

It is however, challenging. I’m quite a morning person, but have struggled a bit with the organisation of today. So far I have:

1. Spent ages trying to locate a bra in my room pile of clean washing. Then found 2 of them neatly folded on the top of one of the piles.
2. Put my Garmin out to get a signal nice and early… Only to turn it off while trying to put on the backlight. I didn’t manage to find the light and had to do some discrete hi-vis loitering on the street corner while it found a signal again.
3. Had some grapes with my breakfast porridge. Not a problem in itself, but I bit down on one of them only to find that it wasn’t actually a grape, rather I’d put my omega-3 capsule in my mouth which resulted in me  eating porridge with a hint of kippers
4. Put my car keys in my bum pocket and thought “I must remove those before these go in the wash”…

Given the above incidents, I’m pleased to confirm that this last one has been done. Have a good day Janathon  comrades!

Day 10/31 –2 miles

Ferrero rochers burned

Daylight run again today, so it was a chance to do a village route that lacks both pavements and lighting, making it far too scary for solo runs in the dark. During last night, yesterday’s bear-paw hands episode revealed itself to be the lurking onset of a cold and I spent the evening snuffling, streaming and suffering as my sinuses started to seal themselves. Luckily the pre-emptive cure of honey and hot lemonade appeared to do the trick and, apart from being a bit snotty, I felt ok this morning.

As I set off, the sky was dark grey at the back of the house and bright blue at the front, so I ran towards the sunshine and tried to ignore my slightly aching legs.

The route I chose takes me through quite a bit of farmland and always reminds me that I’m lucky to have this much green on my doorstep. I’m not sure what the farmers had been up to recently, but it seemed to have attracted the attention of a mass murder of crows, who scared the living daylights out of me as they all swooped over.

Towards the end of the route, I ended up with Lemon Jelly’s Nice Weather for Ducks playing in my head thanks to these fellas, who reminded me of the ducks in my toy farm when I was little.  Never mind mallards, these are proper farm ducks.

Day 9/31 – 5 miles

Ferrero rochers burned

Plan A – Go for country park run with the running club at 8.00, home, shower, nip into town. Plan A failed.

Plan B – Go for a country park run in a different park that I’ve never been to on my own, home, shower, nip into town. Plan B failed.

Plan C – Go for a run in the village, home, shower, nip into town. Plan C failed.

And so Plan D came into action, which is how I ended up going to the bank dressed in my running kit and accessorised with my handbag. At one point I put my bag strap across my chest, until I realised that it was possible to make the running kit/handbag outfit look even more ridiculous.

After I’d been to town, I decided that as I was out in the car I may as well go somewhere interesting and ventured to a spot of the canal further down than I tend to go. Although it was generally a grey day, there were patches of blue sky visible and at one point the sun was so bright that I couldn’t see the difference between mud, puddle and edge of towpath. The sunshine didn’t last long and it felt as if the day was still trying to get going – the sun must have still been up there, but it didn’t seem to be doing a great deal.

As far as the running went, it was a bit of a stop start affair. Partly to take photos, partly to negotiate the mud and partly because I felt a bit lethargic. I put this down to the previous 7 days, but on the return stretch I realised that I had developed an affliction I call “Bear-paw hands” – basically a cock up with hydration – which would explain why I felt rubbish.

Still, I did see a teeny tiny horse

I also ran listening to a debate on whether philosophy is dead on The Infinite Monkey Cage podcast – my brain melted at 2.68 miles, but at least I finished the run slightly more educated and with slightly muddy feet.

Day 8/31 –  3.1 miles

Ferrero rochers burned*

As we finished our sociable run last night, we found ourselves surrounded by althetic types clad in lycra and hi-vis. We were also clad in lycra and hi-vis, but were a slightly less convincingly althletic sight (if you can imagine two oversized black puddings stuffed into trainers, that’s me in my tights). They did their stretches and we basked in their reflected glory so that any passer by might think that we part of this elite group.

I am in fact a member of a running club anTwitter / Home d (hilariously) have an England Athletics membership card that claims that I am an athlete. Despite my membership I haven’t done much club running except a frozen trail run at the end of November, however the club is doing a series of ‘Boot Camp’ runs every day from tonight until Monday and I opted in to one  tonight. It was described as “mainly downhill”, which should have made me nervous as it suggests that there will be a substantial amount of uphill as well. There was.

Oh and my garmin took a while to get a signal, so my pace is a bit skewed (well that’s my excuse).

Day 7/31 –  3.5 miles

Ferrero rochers burned*

*EXACTLY 6!