The Running Project 5k Training Programme: Wk 4 Results

Thrown off course by visitors and work, the beast of the east is back, the Sunday morning run keeps going.

Sunday Morning Run

A cold, icy morning, about -1 degrees centigrade when I went out, after the snow storms and high winds of yesterday.

The main road is busy with cars and, on my way home, I pass little groups of families tucked up in puffa jackets and all-in-ones, trudging along with their sleds. No runners out today, it's far too treacherous underneath.

But I have to go. I don't know whether I am going to ge able to run when I get to the garden, but even if it is a slow, slippery walk, I have to be out there, in the air and among the trees and snow and ice. It's slow going along the road, the ice has thawed in some places and not in others, and rather than a flat coating, the snow had assembled in strange, frozen pustules and rivulets, shaped by the wind. It's difficult to get an even pace and my first timer has sounded before I've reached the garden gates.

Inside, it it truly a winter wonderland, silent, frosted with snow. There's no-one else around. A jackdaw, some lively squirrels. I get past the flags by the carp pond, the asphalt paths beyond are not too bad, I start running to the timer. I'm laughing to myself as I pass the CCTV cameras and imagine the staff saying, "She's here again."

This is only the fourth Sunday morning that I've been out but already it has become established. Everyone knows that's what's going on. They don't know about the other work through the week, but they know that Sunday morning, I am going out for a run. I loved it this morning, waking naturally, drinking my two cups of tea, an early morning call from my partner, the house warm and toasty, family still sleeping silently behind closed doors.

And then coming back, rosy-cheeked, runny-nosed, on a high, fixing cafetiere coffee, hot milk, Hovis wholemeal bread, fresh butter, Frank Cooper's Vintage Oxford Marmalade; eating from bright hand-painted square plates from Greenwich market. The peacefulness and well-being that comes with a routine, knowing that you don't have to do anything or think about anything except what you are doing now.

I'm pleased with the run: this week's plan was thrown off-course by unexpected visitors, a drama at work, the second coming of the beast from the east. I wasn't too worried, I could feel I was getting better, not so sensitive and sore, nadgey joints settling down and stopping their complaining. Perhaps it was even the best thing.

But I knew I wanted to get out on Sunday. It didn't matter what I was able to do, whether I could run, what the weather and conditions were like, the thing was to do it. A while ago, two of my nieces were baptized into the Catholic Church. I was surprised, theirs wasn't a religious family. When I asked one of them about it, she said, "I don't know about all of that. I only know the week goes much better when I've been to Mass."

That is how it is with the Sunday run: a chance to re-calibrate, regardless of the successes and failures of the week, the things planned that never happened, the other pushy, noisy demands of life that insisted on your attention. An opportunity to be in the moment, the quiet, to put aside whatever has happened or not happened, to refresh and to remember who you are and what it is you want. No noise, no distracting keep your pace music, no people. Quiet.