At the moment the majority of my running happens in the dark. One of the downsides of this (especially when combined with a lack of time and a reluctance to run more than three miles) is that my routes are somewhat restricted. I have two routes if I turn left out of the front door and two routes if I turn right out of the front door. It is day six and already I’m getting bored.

It’s also occurred to me that when I’ve done an Athon in the past, I’ve been running regularly in the months beforehand and even with the most optimistic spin, this cannot be said about Janathon 2015. This is why a few more single mile runs than usual have crept in this year, the last thing I want to do is get carried away and do myself a mischief.

So tonight I ran up the next street and back again, then up the next street and back again, and then up the next street and back along the main road. I covered a mile but barely lost sight of the front door.

Today Mini-Ginge and I went on a supermarket mission to do the weekly shop and, more importantly, to acquire me some yoga blocks from Aldi. Like most exercise kit, I suspect these might languish at home unloved and unused, but I can always take them to my yoga class when I restart in a few weeks. Well I could if our local store had any in stock. I would have been fine for mats, foam rollers, kettlebells, gym balls…whatever I fancied. Except yoga blocks, which is all I fancied. So I went to Asda and bought some new tupperware to ease my disappointment.

Tonight’s run was just a couple of miles, but I’ve decided that if I’m only going to do two miles, I might as well make them good ones. So I ran out down the long hill for a mile and then back again up the long hill. This is the first time that I have managed the whole hill in one go. This was down to determination, mental focus and the fact that there were two people walking towards me down the hill and I couldn’t lose face by walking while they could see me… By the time we had passed each other, I was too near the top to give up, so I didn’t.

After a cracking run yesterday, I was giddy with the prospect of doing a longer run, in daylight and finally getting round to listening to one of the many podcasts I’ve neglected over Christmas (there’s been such good stuff on the radio Good Omens, the final Cabin Pressure, the Archers production of Blythe Spirit…). The time to run arrived and despite my determination to keep my Garmin nicely charged, the battery was dead. This was not a major problem, but around the same time I was hit by a dark, gloomy cloud of a mood that left me feeling rubbish (and by default, left poor Ginge feeling rubbish because he took all of the flack from me feeling rubbish).

I even declared that I wasn’t going to run. But then I realised that if I failed Janathon on day four, it would just be another stick to beat myself with.

So I didn’t run until after five. When it was dark. And it was cold. It was so cold that my teeth were chattering for the first quarter of a mile. And I picked a route where the majority of the way out is uphill, and although there’s a lovely downhill to the halfway point, this of course means that you’re faced with hideous uphill to start the return. It wasn’t my best run ever.

But as I got to the halfway mark, all of a sudden there were no cars on the road and apart from the very distant hum of the motorway it was like the world had stopped. Just for a moment.

Why will running never make me thin?

Because I plan my runs to fit around pizza dough proving…

…and then I eat the pizza.

There comes a time in every Athon when you think to yourself “if it wasn’t for Jan/Juneathon, I wouldn’t be doing this”. My moment has arrived on day two. I’ll admit that this is a teeny bit early, even by my standards.

I may have only worked two days in the last fortnight (and they weren’t even consecutive) and yes, every day for the last two weeks has felt like a Saturday, but it’s Friiiiiiiday. I’ve had that Friday feeling all day and all I want to do is get home and commune with some wool. And possibly watch yesterday’s final of World’s Strongest Man….

But it’s Janathon and that means that I have to get off my bum and do something. My broad goals for this month are to get my short runs a bit faster and my long (relatively speaking) ones a bit longer. Tonight’s run involved belting out a mile and I was pleasantly surprised that I did it in 9.45.

It’s not just the running that’s been getting a quick fix, my knitting also had a creative burst last night. Like most knitters, I am a bit of a yarnaholic. As far as I’m concerned, wool can be divided into “wool that is in my yarn stash” and “wool that is not yet in my yarn stash”. In my wisdom, I have decided that I should knit all some a bit of my stash before buying any new stuff. I’m starting with the odd balls that have been bought for me or I have bought on holiday (I love to buy something that I could only get from where we’re staying).

Last night I settled down with a super chunky ball of Shachenmayer Tacoma (bless you) and belted out a dead easy cable headband (using the Winter Morning pattern from While They Play) that can become a dead easy cable neck-warmer when your ears become too toasty. Basically, I’ve made a woolly Buff.

The wool doesn’t really do the pattern justice, but there was just enough in the ball to make a headband that is nice and snug which is all I really wanted!