the complacency of indolence and half throttle commitment

  • Wednesday, August 15, 2012
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I have a bad night, my dreams as fragmented and flickering as an electric storm. It comes as a relief when dawn breaks and I can rise to collect Jerry for a Downland run. We decide to join the weekly HEROS run. Jerry talks too much and this coupled with my questionable navigation skills means that we take the long way round. Arriving just in time we meet Peter, the only other runner and we set off. It's hot and humid and the trails are iron hard. The sky looks like bruised pewter, trapping the heat between it and the earth. I've also made the schoolboy error of leaving my water bottle on the dining room table at home. Idiot.  Fortunately I have an empty in the car and am able to fill it up after a mile at a rural church and I become increasingly grateful as the run progresses. This quickly becomes something other than the usual enjoyable trail run. My perspiration is oily and unhealthy, the legacy of too much chocolate and beer over the holiday. I toil in the sun and I even fall on an innocuous and bland little path, my water bottle bouncing off the rocks ahead of me with a clatter. Peter is relentless, never breaking pace or stride no matter what the gradient. I need this run, it destroys the complacency of indolence and half throttle commitment that I've allowed to creep in to my running. The bible speaks of iron sharpening iron and that is the net result of thirteen miles on the hills in the sun, when we get back to the car I feel tired but also sharper.

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