Today was scheduled as another daylight run, but this time in the company of Ginge. We intended to do an 8ish mile loop with a bit of an explore thrown in, but after about a mile and a half we both realised that our hearts (and in my case, legs as well) weren’t really in it. Rather than do a there and back that I can run on my own, we looped back using footpaths along the railway (scary because they’re a bit lonely), managed a bit of exploring by taking a footpath along the golf course (scary because of my childhood fear of being shouted at by farmers or greenkeepers) and had the hilarious sight of me vaulting lumbering over a five-bar gate. It clocked in at 3.5 miles at a pace that I am trying to claim as a ‘recovery run’.

At home we applied ourselves to the serious business of cake. Because I am terribly organised (interpret that how you will), our Christmas cake remains naked and unadorned with either marzipan or icing and given that twelfth night has been and gone, it seems a little late to be bothering. Instead it has been reclassified as ‘nice fruitcake’ and is now missing a large slice.

However, in the spirit of being organised for Christmas 2012, we did try to plan ahead on the tree front while we were out running.

I am starting the second week of Janathon faced with a quandary. Before Janathon started, I did not intend to run every day. I had a vague plan in my head that I would run four days a week and use the other three to swim or go back to how I tackled Juneathon 2009 and use it as an opportunity to try new things. The difficulties that I have faced with this are:

1. I don’t really like new things
2. It’s January so everyone else will be trying new things
3. It takes longer and requires more organisation to do new things
4. Ultimately I am rubbish at most things that require balance, coordination or other people, which limits my choice of new things.

Needless to say, I have ended up running every day for the first eight days. Tomorrow though, I am doing something else. I’ve been doing yoga on a Wednesday for about three years but had a bit of a break before Christmas. My new class starts next week, but I have an unprecedented two (count them, two) cultural activities on Tuesday and Wednesday, meaning that, although my teacher has been very nice and let me go to a different class, I am now faced with an evening of Power Yoga.

This is undoubtably a Janathon activity. I know that I could go to the class, blog about it and my Janathon would remain intact. I also know that I could get up early and run, which would leave my run of daily Athon running (since June 2010) completely intact. I have absolutely no idea which way to turn, but have a horrible feeling that it will involve a 5:40 alarm call in the morning.

The random blog generator wasn’t spun last night, instead I followed a link from Tom Roper the librarian and visited The Running Librarian, but wasn’t able to comment on his dog owners v runners tally because I’m not a Blogger blogger (I did like it though).