First of all a disclaimer, MUM I AM FINE – IF ANYTHING IS SWOLLEN IN THE MORNING I WILL TAKE MYSELF TO CASUALTY.

We have had a fabulous day out today, Open Farm Sunday looking at tractors and piglets (and pretending that I actually live in The Archers) then on to Crosby to see what Mini-Ginge thought of Antony Gormley’s Another Place. It turns out that Mini-Ginge was far too excited by sand, puddles and seaweed to offer any critical opinions of the piece.

My plan for a morning run had to be postponed so that we could fit in all of this excitement so the plan was for me to squeeze one in before tea. It was supposed to be six or seven miles – mentally I know that I need to get past six to avoid The Fear setting in about longer distances. On the other hand, I was looking forward to my tea. After a bit of umming and ahhhing, I decided to do a route that could be a little out and back if I couldn’t be bothered running six miles fancied a shorter, fast run, a six mile out and back, or a more creative, undulating 6-or-7-not-really-sure mile loop.

Coming up to the 3 mile mark I decided to go for the creative, undulating, unknown mileage route. At 3.36 miles, my plan fell over. Literally.

I was coming to the bottom of a long, steady hill where the footpath peters out without a proper kerb, but there’s no real trip hazards when I did a spectacular dive and the floor was rushing up to meet me. I leapt up, praising the fact that there was no one to witness this but also cursing the fact that there was no one to help me.

Then it hit me that I was three miles from home.

I considered knocking on the door of the neighbouring house and announcing pathetically “I fell over”, but I’m not sure what they would have been able to do for the red-faced sweaty woman brandishing a grazed knee at them. At this point, I felt the woosh of a faint starting to come on (I have a track record for fainting after a fall) and my next thought was “if they take me to A&E, I’m not wearing any pants” and was so mortified by this that the potential faint didn’t dare happen.

Photo doesn’t make it look as bad as it feels.

I turned round and set off walking, pausing occasionally to investigate my scrapes, bruises and the hole in my running tights. I was feeling very sorry for myself and was willing someone to notice my distress and offer to help me. No one did (possibly because I didn’t actually look that distressed) and I plodded on back up the hill that I had just run down. It dawned on me that it would take ages to get home, so I reached the top of the hill, put on another podcast and set off running. I ran-walked all the way home (and rounded up to 3 miles, well I wasn’t going to stop at 2.83 no matter how injured I was) and announced pathetically “I fell over”.

Photo (pasty skin) makes it look worse than it is…

A quik inspection revealed an inventory consisting of; grazes to my left knee and shin, a slight scrape to my right inner  knee, a sore and possibly bruised left hand, a bashed left shoulder and a few little scrapes on my right elbow. I was also very relieved that my favourite irreplaceable race t-shirt had survived intact.I keep thinking that I also bruised my right thigh, but keep reminding myself that this was a pre-existing mystery bruise. I am now really hoping that they come up with a decent bruise so that I have something to show for all of this.

One of our village pubs holds a folk festival on this weekend every year. Historically this weekend has weather best suited to November, so today’s grey skies and blustery winds made a nice summery change. 

Mini-Ginge got his groove on and discovered that a man wearing a flat cap who then takes off the flat cap is hilarious. And I realised that I’m raising a child on pork pie and folk music, which in the great scheme of things isn’t a bad plan. 

My Juneathon effort was a 2 mile round trip to the pub (pram pushing on the return mile). 

Well the plan had been to get up early to do a rare before work run, however Mini-Ginge knows when I have such plans and he scuppers them on a regular basis. Last night was a 3.30am alarm call for no discernable reason. It was resolved fairly quickly but was enough for me to swipe away my 5am alarm clock and enjoy a pretend lie in. 

So an after work run was called for. It seemed a good chance to run somewhere different so I parked up and set my Garmin off looking for a satellite. I fear for my Garmin. When I turned him on he told me (in teeny tiny letters) that I was doing a bleep test. So I turned him off and on again, and he told me it was 1am. So I turned him off and on again, and he seemed ok, but it turns out that Wigan is too leafy and rural to get a satellite sign (who knew?). 

I waited. And waited. And waited.  And got bored of waiting so I set off with no signal. I vaguely know the area and had a rough plan in mind, only to choose a ridiculously steep road, then missed my turning and ended up doing a ridiculous kind of figure of eight of a route. 40 minutes, not sure of the distance, hot, sweaty, more lung dislodged, really enjoyed myself.

Today was another opportunity to combine Juneathon and #30dayswild. Every first Wednesday is Toddle Together at one of our local nature reserves. We went to one in February when Mini-Ginge had just started walking, unreliable and on his own terms. 

It was a bit of a disaster as he didn’t want to walk, go in his pram or be carried in his pouch, he howled for most of the time (very out of character) and I felt that he was woefully underdressed compared to other children (bad mum). On the plus side, the walk was led by a lovely chap called Jim who I actually knew from my rugby watching days and hadn’t seen for about 15 years. And we had a nice lunch. 
  
In better weather and with an enthusiastically walking boy, I had better hopes for today. It wasn’t a brisk walk, Mini-Ginge loves stones and cannot walk on a gravelly path without stopping every few feet to pick some up and redistribute them. The upside of this is that I got a good upper body workout from scooping him up and carrying him at times so that we could get further than the visitors centre.  

Apart from the stones, grass and a dandelion head, Mini-Ginge particularly liked a bus that was in the car park. I think I need to re-emphasise the nature part of the plan to him at some point. 
 

In other news, I discovered that the token yoga that I did on day one had actually worked some long neglected tummy muscles and I have spent all day wincing whenever I laughed. 

Well yesterday’s cloud lifted a little bit by this morning and seemed to have shifted entirely by home time. Hurrah!

This did not stop me procrastinating about my run, though to be honest not much stops me from procrastinating about my run. I know the above/below the neck rule about running with a cold, but I feel absolutely fine apart from a slightly rattly chest and a bit of a cough.

The plan was do do a run-walk for 20 minutes, taking in the local nature reserve for #30dayswild. I felt ok running and stuck to the slightly wilder paths instead of taking my usual route around the lake. The sun was trying to shine, the gale force winds had settled down and the birds were singing. I stopped to take photos, tried my best to run up the hills, walked up some of them and rattled a bit.

By the time I was nearly home, I’d done two and a bit miles. I could have stopped. But then I started thinking… If I stop now, I’ll write this off as being two miles where I walked – it’s not a proper run. But…If I carry on for three miles, it will counts towards my proper marathon training. So I plodded on. And so   three miles it was.