I have a soul full of incoherent scribbles.

Scribbled: Archaic Zimbabwean slang for injury or death.

I have a soul full of incoherent scribbles. I run in order to produce some form of road map to overlay the mess and bring direction. At the moment dominating my thinking is the magic people who come into our lives at what I believe are preordained moments. Some run alongside us for years, others blaze through with the brevity and intensity of a comet. What all these people have in common is that they enrich our lives, rounding off the angles and jagged edges life inflicts. The goodbyes hurt but I never forget them, keeping them deep in my heart. At this time of the year the woods are perfect for this introspection. I've alluded before how much they are like a cathedral, dark, silent and slightly chilled, so that is where I chose to run, looping around the whorls and loops of God's fingerprints, looking for signs and runes. Looking for interpretation.

I am a snail inching my way up the slippery Everest of fitness.

Progress is slow. I am a snail inching my way up the slippery Everest of fitness. I am far from Methuselah but 50 is in sight and I no longer have the elasticity of youth. The view of mortality once so distant is assuming a sharper clarity, less of a smudge on the horizon, it is gathering shape. Four runs, totalling 12 miles, over a two week period doesn't sound like a lot but to me its mammoth. At the moment I can't go far so I am concentrating on the familiar embrace of my old friends, the local woodland. If its Everest I'm scaling then I'm still at base camp but I am preparing to leave, I'm hitting the exercise bike and my physio exercises - and I'm working as hard as I can in PE at school. Falling off the cliff face last October has defined the rest of my running life, I either recover fully and kick on to new heights, or I resign myself to being an occasional 10K runner. At this stage I can't predict which one it will be. I do know which outcome I hope for!