Not a morsel of cake has passed my lips this week. Highlight of the week may well have been a tremendous Eggs Benedict breakfast I had while staying away in the New Forest. A crisp muffin with the tangiest hollandaise sauce, wonderfully runny eggs and salty crisp bacon. I'd intended to go for a run while down there, but opted for an early start to clear the business of the day and make it home for a run instead. It didn't quite work out that way, but the New Forest is a special place, seemingly full of roaming wild horses and pigs. It makes for an interesting if not hazardous drive. When I got home, I found my trail shoes still on the drive, packed in their bag ready to go as intended! Hmmm. 
When is a path not a path? I'm having a moan now. I know. But really, it was fine like it was, just a path, edges defined by the hedges, undulating under foot, requiring deft foot placement, but a texture that was familiar, ruts here, grassy bits there...and so on. Just a nondescript regular path to the woods. Not now, they're doing stuff, marking out crisp edges with planks of wood that look like tram tracks designed to contain you, laying stuff down that looks smooth but is ugly, and is soft, yet lumpy. It's one stage away from tarmac. It looks like a path, but it's not the path it once was. And on the bit where you race down the path now jinks right! Where's that going? Literally, where is that path going now? It wasn't there yesterday! 
I'd intended to go to Macc Forest this evening, but I was late so ran to the airport perimeter. A cracking evening, blue skies and a soft low sun. You have to take the sun while it's there, but it's not how it once was. Where only a few weeks ago, it was strong, leaving crisp dark shadows on the road with the feeling you were running with someone, now the shadows are just ghosts of their former selves. Just a faint memory for company. This is Friday evening and everyone is somewhere, but no one is here. No other runners, no dog walkers, no cars on the road side or in the car park. Even the airport is quiet, just one small plane taking off, yet some somehow creeping it's way into the sky trying not to break the silence and isolation of this run.
If I'm going to run alone, then this is the best way...absolutely alone. Leave those people behind obsessively queuing for their new iPhone and all that that represents. There's living to be done, and it's out here. The sun is low and about to fall behind the clouds before sunset. I have thoughts of future running in the winter months, the fun of running somewhere high to watch the sunset, and then a dark head torch run back. Night time road running last year was OK, but I think it's time to step it up and do some proper night running in the woods. New head torch research needed. Back through the woods and under the tree canopy. Now just the sound of the river and the birds...a moments peace to savour... no-one is here.
