On a day that Lew was clearly sitting in front of the fire watching cartoons, I was out in the rain wondering whether I really need my jacket on, it was that warm. At least inside my jacket!
I was in a wonderfully thoughtful frame of mind, brought on by my continued reading of The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb and my reaching a point where he posits a definition of an epistemocrat, with which I can associate.
I think that I finally got out at ten past eleven, choosing a moment where there was a squall in progress which helped me to decide which direction I was going to run. For the woods! I feel very lucky to have enough woodland in close proximity to be able to run for an hour under cover, which is great on hot days and on wet & windy days. And I guess especially on days when you are both hot and wet, like today!
I ran to the Royal Oak and up through Hundred Acre wood, where I was delighted to see all manner of walkers, young and old, with and without dogs (it was a shame that two Wivelsfield ladies couldn’t be bothered to at least flick their dog’s poo off the path though!). It might have been windy and raining but it really was beautiful out there! And great for the soul!
As I ran along the magical path, I realised that it was a lovely metaphor for life. The path winds ahead through the trees and you have a sense of where you are going, but not a clear view. There are opportunities to turn off onto different paths along the way, but the path ahead is really intriguing. Most importantly, you have to watch your step, ducking around the trees and under low branches.
This is wonderful if you have your wits about you, but I can imagine it not being such fun if it were dark, or you were tired, as it would be quite confusing and dangerous. I really must take a photo to show you what I mean.
I’m always keen not to run the same route twice, as the tendency is to compare times directly and today I had the additional incentive that I knew the easy way back would not allow me to reach the hour, a kind of informal lower threshold for a Sunday run. So I ran on past the development of St George’s Retreat and back to the Royal Oak.
Here I took a Nietzschian decision. Rather than stick to the calm shelter of the woodland, I would cut back across more open ground, in spite of the conditions, in order to experience the adversity of it. I recalled cold, miserably wet walks in Wales, the Lake District and Scotland when I was young.
As I pushed on into the weather, I was surprised that it still had a draining effect on my energy and I wondered how much of this was physical and how much psychological. Even being aware of it, I still suspect it is the latter, as once I was back into woodland I felt fine and I was not exhausted on reaching home.
The distance was 6.75 miles and the time on completion was, er, ten past eleven. That’s strange, it took me no time whatsoever.
Or maybe British Summertime ended while I was out.