Matt Gets Running

…in the best of all pos­si­ble worlds”.

I’d not noticed this bit of lit­er­ally Pan­gloss­ian opti­mism in Bab­sham­bles’ Deft Left Hand before. But it seemed to be the theme of the morn­ing, as I climbed up into the sun­shine on the Downs, and my iPod ran­domly picked the most cheer­fully British of Pete Doherty’s out­put, from Albion to The Last of the Eng­lish Roses. Okay, some of Doherty’s cheer­i­ness might be a touch ironic in places, but it’s clear that he’s in love with at least bits of his coun­try at a fairly deep level.

And, jog­ging around the green­ery of Clifton Down, occa­sion­ally pick­ing my way through bits of fallen tree from the weekend’s storms, as the sun picked out the colours of the last of the autumn leaves, it was easy to take the cheer­i­ness at face value.

So, yeah, a good run. I didn’t push it hard, just did a sim­ple 5-and-a-bit-K, end­ing up in the Cof­fee #1 in Clifton Vil­lage. That did noth­ing to dis­pel my joy with the world, as I walked in and the girl behind the counter, who I’m pretty sure has only seen me three times before, smiled and said, “Large vanilla latte to take away?” Gotta love that.

This is a bit of a relief after my rub­bish run ear­lier this week, frankly. If it had been an equally crap run, I might have decided to take a week off to give myself a break. As it is, I’m just going to take it easy this week, not push­ing myself any fur­ther than 5K, and then see how I feel at the weekend.