Redbush Runner

So much for the long run I had planned this morning.  I just couldn't do it.  5K was my limit today, a combination of it being surprisingly warm for the time of year, the energy-zapping effects of a virus and no doubt a bit of mental exhaustion thrown in for good measure.  (Not that I'm one to make excuses, of course!)  But they say, "no run is a wasted run" and that's true.  As 5K goes, it was thoroughly respectable, but I'm frustrated because I set out intending to do more and I failed.  The question is, how am I going to tackle this half next month?  I just can't see it happening.  I'm neither physically or mentally ready. Perhaps I need to cut myself some slack.  Life's been a bit weird recently.  Sometimes in life you get these odd blips. And they are just that, 'blips', nothing more, but you don't necessarily realise this at the time.  Sometimes things happen which throw up stuff from the past, things that you have already d...

So much for the dire weather forecast earlier in the week.  The Sheffield 10K went ahead in perfect conditions and what a race it was! Now, I know I've done a half marathon this year and I've another one coming up, but in some ways the Sheffield 10K still feels like the big running event of the year for me.  I don't know whether that's because it was the 'biggy' last year, our first official 10K race, a sort of rite of passage and therefore it holds a special place in my heart, or whether it's a way of making up for my disappointment over the York 10K.  I loved York but I think, being honest with myself, I was perhaps a bit more frustrated by it than I've been prepared to admit.  Don't get me wrong, I think I did pretty well at York, given the atrocious heat on the day and we know that finishing times alone rarely tell the whole story, but there's nothing like getting a fast time to put you in a great mood for days.  So, I felt I had something ...

Every now and again you hear a shocking story about someone who has been attacked while out running.   Rare though those events are, the fear amongst runners is understandably high.   As someone who likes to run stretches of quiet trail on my own, I often wonder if I’m being foolish.   But I remind myself that this running lark is doing me the world of good and I love it too much to have the experience ruined by worries about encountering a random nutter. Some days, however, my already colourful imagination goes into overdrive and I become convinced that today is the day I will be murdered.   I can be trotting along quite happily and then suddenly I’ll spot someone in the distance and I'll decide quite spontaneously and no doubt erroneously that something isn't quite right about that person.  Before I know it, I’ll have persuaded myself that I'm in danger.   The other day, I became particularly nervous.   I kept turning my head, was certain I cou...

I've always been a fidget.  I find it hard to sit still at the best of times (one of the reasons I rarely go to the cinema) but when there's something on my mind, I pace like a depressed polar bear in a zoo. That's one of the reasons running is so good for me.  I feel instantly better when I'm moving.  Once I get into a rhythm, it soothes me and although I'm not exactly Paula Radcliffe, I can currently run at a speed that does, to me at least, feel a bit like flying.  And boy, did I need to fly away for a little today. We're in the midst of a cat crisis.  Putting it simply (though I suspect from a feline psychology point of view it's far from simple) one cat keeps biting the other cat, causing puncture wounds that mean we're back and forth from the vets at the moment.  The cats have a complex relationship.  Weeks can go by when they cohabit without incident, then randomly we'll have another ambushing.  It's over and done with in a matter of s...