Back to work

Went back to work today after the Christmas break but took the kids to school en-route, together with a lad who goes to the same school. Much speculation about whether we'll have more snow and, more to the point, whether the school will need to close with obvious excitement from the kids. Just as I was dropping the kids at school, Sarah asked me when I'd be home.
"about teatime, I expect"
"well what time do you think you'll actually be home" she pressed
"about 6, maybe 6.30" I said and that was received by a comforted smile.

I always know when I've had a decent time away from the office when I can't remember my password and this was almost the case today. In the time it took me to open a couple of internal mail envelopes, it came back to me, grrrrr. At home it always takes time to forget about work completely and it's often useful to have my things-to-do book in easy reach so I can jot down things as they occur to me. Thankfully I don't think I touched it once.

A pretty easy day spent reading e-mails, a few phone calls and a couple of short pieces of work. There was an email from my friend Wallie saying his Mum had died just before Christmas. Not unexpected and then I remembered I'd been thinking of him over Christmas, wondering how things were.

I had in mind going for a treadmill run in the gym this evening but it didn't happen. I sensed I needed to be at home this evening. I had a couple of short runs a few days ago, over the weekend. Maybe 1 or 2 miles each time, just enough to keep limbered up.

Irrational I know but I worry I'm going to lose all my strength if I go a week without running. I can feel the muscles in my legs aren't as taught as I like them to be, so easy to go off the boil, so to speak. Must go tomorrow. I have entered the Bath Half on 7th March and need to stay in good shape and do a couple of runs of that length beforehand. Although this is the first time I've entered a half marathon, I feel pretty confident I can cover the distance. But I want to enjoy it and finish in a reasonable time.

Sometimes, actually quite often, I give myself a hard time for easing off running, even though I'm still relatively new to the sport. I feel like I'm letting myself down, un-doing the progress I'd made and imagine I'm suffering some kind of withdrawal symptoms. Its almost like a kind of restlessness that can quickly go with the first buzz 10 minutes into an hour's run. On my regular run (about 6.75miles) there's a short but steep hill to climb and just over the other side is a gentle slope downwards, just right for picking up some more speed. Sometimes there's a bit of flooding across the road in a little dip. That's great to run through, feeling the (cold) water splash up my legs and instantly feel my shoes take on some water. If it's more than a few strides across I like to run as lightly as I can almost dancing across the water running on the outside edge of my feet. I look back afterwards hoping the water is still, it almost is still. So by that stage I feel like the run has welcomed me back again and rewarding me.