Blue black skies – warming up for December

One thing running, or any outdoor activity gives you is an appreciation of the weather. Sometimes when I look back to blog posts or other diary entries from this year it seems as if I am constantly talking about rain, rain, wind and rain.

It has been a wet year.

I don’t really mind bad weather in fact prefer running in colder temperatures to warm ones, and with the exception of ice will run in most conditions, but unremitting greyness is not a lot of fun, with no big sky to look to, the horizon has no definition and motivation is hard.

November is nearly over and there have been precious few of the crisp cold winter days where skies are bright blue and the air seems purer, but recent showery weather has provided some amazing clouds and contrasting light to offset the grey.

Last year I ran every day in December as part of the Marcothon challenge , and I have been considering whether I can face it again – especially as when I did the same thing it June it seemed to rain every day- but I am signed up to run a half marathon in March so I reckon I have to try and get my fitness and mileage up, so on balance have decided to give it a go.

With this in mind – yesterday after my usual run in the morning , I thought I would see how my legs felt if I did a second run in the afternoon. I dont run very fast or very far, and recently have got into the habit of running 4 miles at most, so if I am going to manage 13.1 I do need to start upping the miles.

I did a ‘lets see how it goes run’ from my house- this is where I allow myself the option of turning back at any given point- but as it happened I felt quite sprightly ( my run in the morning had been a bit truncated due to icy conditions and other interruptions ). I headed downhill towards the Dell and thought I would aim to do 3, but of course as the first half mile is a long downhill the corresponding last half mile will be a long uphill !

So to avoid this, I kept going along the Dell path that runs alongside the Water of Leith, the path is an old suburban railway so is relatively flat, although when your legs are tired you do notice the gradual incline, and when it’s muddy it can be heavy going. I ran to a point where I had completed 2 miles and then retraced my steps, reaching my 3 mile goal on the return leg of the flat.

Of course I got the to the end of the flat section with my Nike plus at 3.58 miles so was then faced with the completists dilemma -it would be tidier if I just did 4 miles. So I did run part of the way up the hill, and then did a few times round the block to reach 4 miles.

Was glad to have done the extra run, but I did notice it this morning so think I have some way to go before I am race fit .