Yesterday morning the rain came pouring down and the 4C weather made me want to stay in bed the whole day. There was an 8K to run though, and it wasn't going to happen while I was in bed. So I got up (rather lazily around 2PM) and with Andy on the bike next to me, started jogging out towards Bull Hill Lane.
About 500m from home I heard a sliding/skidding sound and looked around. Andy somehow managed to slip... on the bike. He waved me on and I kept going until about a km into the run when he finally caught up with me.
Now, the day was cold and there was a lot of cold moisture in the air. My hands felt frosty as I clinged to my MP3 player (the iPod needed some charging) and huffed and puffed around the road. I was doing the same course that I did 4 weeks before (while Andy went to play golf with Adas), but backwards this time. Andy must've felt a little lost until we got to the farmyard where we normally turn around from the other side.
At this stage I was running comfortably at 5'40" per km and enjoying listening to the music and in a way "being alone with my thoughts". The course is only about 7km - when I got to the point that I could just go straight home or turn onto the cloud trail I naturally followed the route of the cloud trail and managed to find just about every person with a dog on it. I barked hello to every single one of them as I passed them and just hoped that none of them had misbehaving dogs that would be chasing me down the trail.
With 50m to go, there was a hill. I shook my head and turned around. There was NO way that I was finishing my run on a hill. Absolutely no way.
Afterwards I had about a 2km walk home, but Andy felt like jogging and instead gave me the bike which I happily peddled home.
I enjoyed the run and there was no pain / discomfort in either of my legs. :)
Another 11 weeks to go!
Always OK to walk up the hill after a good run. 'Specially in the chill.