Twelve Weeks to go

Being a creature of habit, I catch the same buses into work each day. The one outside the house leaves at just after 8am (safest to think of it as 8am anyhow as if you go out at 8.04 which is the official time it may well have gone.) Then I catch the first one I can into Ashton.

Most days there will be regulars: people who are as habitual about their journeys as I am. One small group of regulars is a young mum who takes her two children to school each day. Usually the children squabble over seats, over who gets to take the tickets, over who presses the bell, and usually it is the girl who wins. I don't know why. Maybe she is older, or more forceful. Certainly she is more skilled in blaming her brother for all sorts of things. "Mum, he won't let me sit down!" Her brother complains of course, but each day mum makes them sort things out themselves or shouts at them both until they subside into angry silence. After all what she wants is a few moments of peace and quiet on the bus.

Today was different. Only mum and the boy got on the bus. "Mum, is this the first bus or the second?" "The first." There were no arguments before they sat down and the boy was content to watch out of the window for most of the journey. Silence of a sort settled over the passengers. MP3 players chittered behind me. The chap who gets off near the garage got off as usual, "Thanks, Guv!" and vaulted over the low wall into work, as he always does unless a colleague is with him.

A couple of stops later the small family group got off. The boy, still with a look of great contentment ran as fast as he could, coat flapping behind him. He ran right to the end of the block without looking back, obviously running just because he could and it was fun, and why would anyone want to walk when they could run? At the corner he stopped, paused for breath and walked three or four paces. Then having recovered sufficiently, he began to run again in the same easy, joyful way. And that was the last I saw of him as the bus moved on. I wonder if he will become a recreational runner when he grow up? I like to imagine he might.

Do you remember when it was fun to run like that? In truth I don't remember being seven or eight as he must be. But there have been brief times like that. One was a year or more ago when I walked to the top of Werneth Low to run around the flat summit. (Around here all our hill tops and plateaus are called Lows. It confuses the heck out of incomers, but apparently makes sense to linguists.) Just for fun I ran over a mile back down hill and home rejoicing in that I could actually do just that. It felt like I could run forever. Was this the runner's high people talk about? Is this what 'getting into the zone' is all about? Maybe. Of course I couldn't really run for ever, but the moment was good while it lasted.

I had a similar but vastly different experience last week. John was away overnight so it fell to me to walk the dog before we went to bed. Being me, it was rather late. These days Muppet is more used to going for a run with me than a walk but it was a non-running day so I pulled on jeans and old trainers. It was raining that fine rain that soaks you through, so waterproofs were donned as well. We walked a good while, but it was obvious that Muppet thought we should be running and I was itching to run too. So we did. Just because we wanted to and could. As the rain was cooling it made running easy. As it was late at night there was no-one to wonder what we we were up to. And we finished the route running. Again there was that sense of being able to keep going and of great contentment. The following day I should have suffered from not wearing proper running shoes, but in fact I was fine. Muppet of course was fine too.

More usually I get that sense of running in tune with both my body and the world in dreams. Yes. You read that right. I dream of running. I don't quite know when I started to do so, but now and again I do. I suspect that sometimes it is because I have planned a morning run before work and it's my body's way of preparing me to wake up early. Always in my dreams running is easy. I don't get over tired or breathless. Sometimes I think (dream that I think, I mean) that my running is getting better and am pleased that it has become easy to cover long distances. More recently in dreams I recognise that it is a dream because the running is so easy! The interesting thing is that if I remember how I ran in my dream as I do a waking run I begin to run more easily, to relax into the run and in so doing begin to actually run better. Sadly, though in my running dreams I am both thinner and taller, remembering this in waking runs has not increased my height or decreased my waist. Pity.

This morning Muppet and I went out to run at 6.15. We did my long road route which usually takes about 50 minutes. I took my runners watch which is currently set to beep at 45 and then 115 second intervals to signal when to run and when to walk. My aim was simply to run and walk according to sequence all the way. It was a sunny but cool morning and not many people about except those going to work. I hardly needed to hear the watch. Muppet has an apparently pavlovian response to the beeps. She runs or walks as it tells us to irrespective of whether I am paying attention or not. By the grace of God I have not yet strangled her with her lead, nore has she tripped me up with it.

By the time we got half way round it felt like we had been doing this for ever. I couldn't run properly. I weighed a ton. I didn't want to run. My breathing was ragged. My face would have glowed in the dark if it was dark. Muppet kept dragging behind. But somehow we kept going. At the bus shelter my calves were aching so I stopped to stretch them out. And then we set off again. At the forty minute point I looked at my watch. It had taken us THIRTY minutes! no wonder we were both sufffering. I slowed the pace after that. Even so I added another half mile or so cross country through the woods and round the meadow as the aim was to run for 55 minutes. And we were still early home. So in the end it was a good run even though it didn't feel like it, and a good way to start the working week.