James - 3.3

27:45

During my trip to Scotland I walked up a mountain that was, at its peak, 1027metres above sea level. If you don't know, as similar as they may seem, the fitness required for running is nothing like the fitness required for climbing uphill for hours on end. And downhill even. My friends, who could never dream of doing a 10K, were constantly having to wait for me. I have done this for several years and I always forget how exhausting it is. But I also always forget how worth it it is when you see the view from the top. I slipped in a patch of snow and skidded down about 10 feet, fantastic.

Anyway! On to todays run. It was hard to run this far after a week and a half off, and looking at it it seems pretty slow. Several cyclists were hovering around me. One ran behind me for over two minutes, during which time I moved over to the side of the canal to let her pass, but she just about passed me once then fell behind again. I also ran past a rowing team on the way out and way back, jumping over their beached oars, and I jumped over a dog too.

I was/am worried about my shoes, because on the day of my last run I wore them out somewhere, which I never normally do (it was to vote in the EU elections - a fascist party won a seat in my region, which has bummed me out no end). Directly next to the polling place, where I was planning to vote Green, I saw some small fires in a public park. Thinking it stupid to ignore them so I could go and vote for someone else to be environmentally responsible on my behalf, I went in and stamped them out. I was still stupid though and didnt clean them when I got in so today I put them on and noticed hardened burnt phone book stuck to the bottom, or whatever kids in the park had been burning. They seemed alright while running though. Oh and when 5 minutes later I left the polling place, a huge fire engine was there to put out the non-fires. Because people who do perfectly simple things for themselves in their own communities are weird, so it's better to call authority figures simply because you can, regardless of them maybe having better things to do or their vehicle being more polluting than what they showed up to douse. Or us being perhaps more than grown-up children with mobile phones and credit cards living in giant legolands where we don't know how to do anything on our own.

Whilst camping I drank 7 nights running, then drank on an 8th night back home because I was DJing and that is our form of payment. A month of soberness is on the cards, and coupled with running today felt like a good detoxing start.