We thought that our friend Birgit had a birthday coming up soon and we had bought a little present for her a week or so ago, all we had to do we to wheedle out of her when exactly it was. Last Sunday morning when we had put our run start off for an hour or two because it was lashing rain first thing, she had gone out on her own in a cape, for a short run never mind the rain, because she had a friend calling to see her later, so it did not suit her to wait. I am too long in the tooth to get wet deliberately when the rain was due to stop later for a while anyway.
Later she sent a message to say did we fancy a run on Wednesday morning when she was free for a while. We like to get a run in every other day where possible, so we went along with that meeting for this morning. Coach Steve decided on the usual 10km loop but doing it backwards today for no other reason than a bit of variety.
I started straight away as soon as we were parked up. The idea being to conduct the usual tortoise and hare run, because she is a little faster than me and would catch and pass me somewhere along the run and that would also suit the social distancing advice that she is well aware of since she is a GP. Off I strode, while Steve waited for Birgit to arrive at start the run , I need to settle my breathing down before putting in much effort. There is not much wrong with my legs, strength wise, my lungs are the problem. What I do is, count strides of my right leg; I have done this for years and it works, so why knock it. 60 jog and 60 walk, whilst on the level at the start of any run. As I start to feel better the count will go up and the slow pace will go down. Hills will cut the jog amount depending on the gradient.
At the first turn off, which was a gate I noticed that the glove that Steve lost on Sunday’s run, and that we had gone out again over the same route on Monday to look for it since they were his best and warmest gloves, but had not found on our search. We concluded that the wind was very strong on Sunday and we may never see the glove again. Yet here it was wrapped by its Velco wrist strap to a five-bar gate where some kind considerate person had prominently hung it. I didn’t pick it up then because I knew that he would be riding past and would see it himself in a while.
I then turned down a steep chalk path that was fairly slippery, so I did run down most of it, but in a careful mode watching exactly where I placed my feet. At the end of that path I went through a big metal gate and started on a mile and a half long slow grassy uphill section, that runs alongside the gallops. I was not expecting either Steve or Birgit to catch me for a while. It was the first time there had been frost on the ground and where it had started to melt off, there were tiny glinting crystals everywhere. So beautiful. I started with my counting with 60 run and 30 walk, and that felt fine then and according to the gradient I changed it here and there where it levelled off slightly.
It was the most marvellous day, with a bright blue sky, though the sun had not yet reached the valley that I was in, and a little way ahead I could see the line where I would come out into the sunlight, that took longer to reach than I thought and the reason can only have been that the sun was rising around the back of the trees up the hill to me right, so in fact the sunny bit, was racing me up the hill. It was instantly a little warmer once out in the bright light but my fingers had got quite cold and I had been working them to keep them from dropping off. As I carried on up the hillside I passed two of places where we know without looking, how far we have been or how far it is to go and reaching the water trough I knew that I had 4 miles to go, since that is the turn marker if you are doing an 8 mile run and have run the course from the opposite way. I was feeling fine by then.
I had got almost to the top of the climb when I turned and looked to see if I could see either Brigit or Steve or both. Steve was riding along just past the water trough, I was maybe a quarter mile ahead, but he had a steep climb to go. Buy the trig point at the run high point, I was really enjoying my run and Steve didn’t catch me until the gate that leads onto the ridge path above lower Barpham. I got to the gate and held it open for him to ride past. I asked him if he picked up his glove but he hadn’t even seen it, (Men eh?) not that it mattered because we would pass it again a little way before the end of the run. He stayed close to me along the ridge path that was extremely muddy and slippery with almost impassable sections where you had the choice of wet feet or a battle with the clawing of the blackberry thorns.
At the end of that section, he said that he was going to go back to check on Birgit and would then see me toward the end of the run. There is exactly 2 miles to go from that point and I was feeling nice and relaxed and my breathing was good, so I thought that I would stop the counting method and just run steadily all the way back if I could, ups and downs included; something I have not done for some time. I was helped along the way by the music in my head. It was from The Midnight Tango dance show that we had watched recently on You Tube and the rhythm fitted nicely to my stride and those last two miles were sheer joy. When Steve got back to me just before the end his first words were, that I was going well, and was not surprised when I said that I had run all the way along the Monarchs Way section. The November light on such a glorious day through the woodland was utterly breath-taking.
At the finish point I turned to walk back until Birgit came into sight. She was not far behind and said “Oh don’t rub it in”, meaning that she thought she must have been slow because she didn’t catch me but Steve had told me that I had the best time for the run that he could remember, certainly this year which made her feel much better. At the end of the run we told her that we had forgotten what the actual date of her birthday was, but knew it was somewhere close to this day and she smiled and said it was today, and was very happy that we remembered and with her little present.
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