The Tide is High, I’m Rolling On

This morning has been a morning of water. I have a lot to do today. After I woke up, had breakfast and had a shower, I looked out of the window.

Onto dreary grey drizzle. Meh. But, looking at the weather forecast and the rest of my busy schedule, I figured that drizzle might actually be my best option today.

So, on with the running gear and out into the rain. Carrying a water bottle for the first time. I didn’t seem to need it for the first run, but I got a little thirsty towards the end of the last one.

I twanged¹ through my songs and happened upon Babyshambles’ Fuck Forever, which seemed suitably bouncy and rebellious, so I hit the Genius button, and my iPhone generated the perfect energetic playlist for my run, churning out:

• Fuck Forever
• Nancy Boy — Placebo
• Ever Fallen in Love — Buzzcocks (as opposed to the Thea Gilmore version I very much enjoy, too)
• Disco 2000 — Pulp
• The Passenger — Iggy Pop
• She Bangs the Drums — The Stone Roses

It even produced Alabama 3’s Woke Up this Morning for the warmdown. Classic.

Anyway. A slightly different run today. First off, I decided to start Get Running as soon as I got out of the door, rather than waiting a bit — I wanted to get through the run and out of the rain before it turned nastier. Earlier on this week there were sudden hail- and thunderstorms, so I figured I’d try to cut down my chances of getting caught out.

Second, as you can see from today’s picture, it was high tide and not low tide, like yesterday. Because of this, there must have been a few boats leaving the harbour, so my route was changed a bit: I normally cross the harbour by walking across the top of the lock gates, but they were open this morning, so that wouldn’t have got me very far!

So, instead, it was up a concrete spiral staircase and onto the A‑road flyover/bridge, which has decent enough pavement, to start my running just as I got to the top, luckily. Jogging is one thing; jogging up a spiral staircase seems like it would be a mite trickier…

And after that, pretty much as normal. It was a little harder, not because of the rain, but because my breakfast was still weighing me down a little — I baked fresh bread yesterday, and I couldn’t resist scrambled eggs on toast this morning 🙂 Next time, if I have the time, I’ll leave it a bit longer or have breakfast when I come back!

I arrived back feeling pretty chipper. Although I really must stretch after I’ve finished this blog entry and before my muscles cool down too much. Good job I’m a quick writer!

This is my third run, and the final run of the first week of the Couch to 5K program. So the next run will be a bit harder. But I have a couple of days off — Get Running is telling me that Wednesday would be a good day for the next run — so I should be doing it when I’m nice and fresh and ready. Until then, have a good week, everyone!

¹ twang, (n): to flick vigourously through a list using Apple’s touchscreen interface, and stop suddenly, thus producing a pseudo-random selection.