There's a route I like to take home from work. By car. Not the most direct, as a general description, but often the quickest...or the one where I keep moving the most. It's via the airport, off at Junction 5 on the 56, and home through Styal. There's a junction, a big one, complex, as you come off the link road and enter the airport itself or pass down by my old office. It's simple, hit the lights, round the roundabout, straight home. Except, I chose a slightly different option. If I keep left and go 'high', I take in an extra junction, a few more turns.
And if I'm lucky, very lucky, I can beat the lights I would have come through the normal 'low' way. Nearly every day I go 'high'. Ridiculous. I've figured I have success about one time in seven. Those seven, I sit at the lights on red and watch cars sail past that were behind me on the link road, my 'mark' car having long gone. But one time, the one when there's no traffic up at the T2 junction, and the lights at the bottom are just changing to green as I come down the hill, and no ones turning left to go towards Wythenshawe, that's the sweetest moment.
It more than makes up for the seven fails, it's worth keeps me going, ever hopeful and optimistic. Nonsense or what? I heard a saying this week, by Michael Johnson. "You'll miss 100% of the shots you never take!" It's difficult to explain the direct relationship to my running. But there are times when the training is shit, the weather foul and the route the same. But when a moment presents itself, a spectacular sunrise, some unexpected company or just a rare feeling of self satisfaction, you appreciate it more.
You just need to be out there! This may not be the most conventional summary of my Running Around for another year. It has been a season of two halves, for sure. I have taken the rough with the smooth, enjoyed the good because of the bad, and learnt that pleasure is the outcome of pain. Currently, I have no races in the diary, my mileage is at an all time high, I'm injury free...and I'm enjoying my running. It's all related and curiously the complete opposite to this time last year. Funny how things change.
