Monday morning, first thing

We had a great weekend, but the consequence of having a delicious meal at Philip & Isabelle’s in London on Saturday night, followed by an early morning drive home, was that I had no appetite for running on Sunday morning.

And once I had finished the novel I had been reading, I sat & read HBR instead… although it was not exactly Sunday reading!

Last thing last night I decided that, if the weather was clement this morning, I would go out for a run rather than sit & read (since I had already made a good start on HBR!).

It took me a few minutes to remember my plan when I got up at 6am, but by a quarter past I was running off down the road into a shepherds warning morning.

I took my default short route (Royal Oak, Wivelsfield, West Wood, Magical Path) to the accompaniment of six bars from the end of Stairway to Heaven which I’ve been driving Kim mad by playing repeatedly on my guitar… by the end of the run, I was going mad listening to it go around in my head too!

The sun made an appearance while I was running around, at one point vividly lighting up two or three trees in the relative gloom ahead of me.  I couldn’t help but smile!

Bearing in mind I had got up and gone out with nothing more than a banana for sustenance (no, no time even for a quadspresso!), I felt pretty good, butI knew I was not running especially quickly.

As I came across the backlit Common, I stretched out my stride a little, but soon returned to a more circumspect pace.

So 5.2 miles in 48 minutes is a great way to start the week and at 6.5mph, is not such a bad pace either.. especially for a pre-7am run!