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’.

The golf course of terror

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.

The crumbs formerly known as Christmas Cake

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.

We'll take the third from the left

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).