It's been a week of...well, no running. A work trip away, took my shoes and kit obviously, but I regret to admit...they never came out. It's an almost dirty feeling...the sense of failure, not getting out when you could have, planned to...but didn't. What can I say! I did bookend the week with a couple of runs with Pete. The first was somewhat splashy. I sensed he wasn't keen, but sold it on the promise of coffee. Wet, never ending puddles over our ankles, up through the farm, it was head torches on full beams, illuminating shards of passing rain and steamy breath.
This morning, our run was planned before I'd got home yesterday. On the plane home, I could see it had been snowing as we flew into Manchester over the Peak District hills. I need to be out in that, I thought. A carefully crafted 'invitation' to Pete. I say invitation...more of a suggestion, something again he'd appreciate after, but at this moment he's really not keen. He knows he has to come, despite the extra training he's been doing and the recent collapse of dry-January. He didn't want to run. And neither did. I just wanted to be there.
The run was just the mechanism to get out in the biting wind and what turned out to be sections of un-runnable snow and ice. It was super hard, bitterly cold and thoroughly amazing. Something very childish about the urge to get out and run around in knee deep snow. But not quite as childish as the giggles and grins from the guys who'd come out specially to Kayak on the frozen canal. Ice breakers they were not, but fun they most certainly were having. Hot chocolate thawed us out...it seems Pete is affected by too much coffee!
