Matt Gets Running

I don’t exer­cise in the morn­ing. I’m just not a morn­ing per­son. Vir­tu­ally all my run­ning is done in the evening, or, at the very ear­li­est, lunchtime, at the weekends.

So. A bit odd, then, that this morn­ing I woke up just before the alarm clock did that quiet lit­tle *clonk* it does when the alarm’s not actu­ally switched on, and thought, “Hmm. I fancy a jog.”

Even more odd, I actu­ally went and did it. None of the stats look unusual on the Run­K­eeper log. 7K in 56 min­utes, a lit­tle under 8 min­utes per kilo­me­tre — slow, but not unusual when Bridge Val­ley Road is involved. What’s unusual is that the run started at just past 7am on a Sun­day morning.

It made a nice change, actu­ally. I think I suf­fered a bit more towards the end than usual — there’s a final lit­tle incline I have to get up, and it seemed harder today. Maybe I was lack­ing blood sugar.

But on the whole, it was a pretty nice expe­ri­ence. I was out early enough to dis­turb some wildlife I don’t nor­mally see — a cor­morant, for exam­ple, flap­ping away to the other side of the river as I bounded past, and the crows, yet to be rel­e­gated to the side­lines by the Sun­day foot­ball leagues, pulling their stringy break­fast from the Downs.

And I fin­ished on an unex­pected bonus, too: I’d expected a pit­fall of the early start to be a lack of cof­fee at the fin­ish line, but once I’d passed my three usual sus­pects for a post-run drink — Cof­fee #1, Chan­dos Deli, and Boston Tea Party — I stum­bled across Caffe Nero, who open at 8am every Sun­day. Not only were they open, they wished me a happy Valentine’s Day as soon as I walked in, which was a nice touch.

So, in the absence of any decent pho­tos — it was a dull, grey dawn this morn­ing — here’s some prod­uct place­ment. I think they deserve it :)

PS: I went out for a sim­ple 5K on Wednes­day, but didn’t have time to blog about it. But I’m keep­ing up the momen­tum, honest!