Warm up and stretch!

On Tuesday, whilst taking up my usual place around the hot water urn, my reply to the offer.... "morning, Thornton's mini caramel slice?" (now this is impressive) I said "oh no not for me but thank you"......."no really" (more strained) "I need to loose half a stone before Christmas". I sloped back to my office almost crying.

Half way through the morning I get a text message from Su - "can we go for a run tonight instead of tomorrow?- Yey!. So I text back "defo" and hurtle back to the urn and the Thornton's mini caramel slices.......only to find an empty packet. Seriously. Why oh why do people do that? I mean if you've taken, and I mean taken, the last caramel slice, rolo or whatever, at least have the decency to throw away the packet. My older sister had a cunning trick she used to play when we were kids; she would re-wrap the foil of an empty wriggleys spearmint chewing gum and slide it back into it's paper sleeve. I would nick one, find a hidey hole, open it (Charlie Bucket-style) only to find no gum, no golden ticket, no nothing, just an empty wrapper and one smug sister.....sick. Still it means I can have a hot chocolate in Ocean on Whiteladies road after my run.

It was already dark when I got home from work and as I was running late I failed to stretch or warm up properly, well at all. So I get outside and jeez it's freezin' so I go back inside again, thought about it, didn't want to let Su down, remembered being told by a certain friend that when I hit the next decade (next month) it's all down hill from there (thanks), put on my gloves and scalf and head out.

We set off from Su's house at a comfortable pace through Westbury Park onto North View. I was hoping that my tendons, ligaments and muscles would realise that this was the warm up so we could pick it up a bit once we got to the Downs. It was just before 5pm and already pitch black outside away from street lighting so of course our conversation, as we jogged, turned to the topical subject in Bristol at the present. The pitfalls of jogging as a lone woman in the dark.....or even in the daylight according to recent events.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7717644.stm

Off the back of that, we decided to miss out the bottom half of the Downs that has no street lighting (unless you borrow a Bristol fire brigade engine to shine it's full beam on the area.....oh it's happened before!) and double looped the well-lit middle part to make up the distance.

It was on the way back that my left knee started to complain that I'd not bothered to warm up or stretch, however, it was soon forgotten (for now) when we got to Su's to be greeted with a homemade chocolate cake. Later, I sat in Ocean drinking a hot chocolate with cream....and Marsh mallows.....and a flake, well I earned it? the barman at Ocean on Whiteladies road thought so obviously, or he wouldn't have topped me up for free. Cheers.

On Wednesday, in work, I was rather pleased that flap jack was on offer, and as I was due for another run that evening with Phil around the Bristol docks, it was justifiable. That was until I stood up from my desk and felt my knee seize up, I hobbled down to the 'special room where special cakes are found' and realised that the run that night was not going to happen. I resisted, no really I did.........for 14 seconds.

Tonight I'm off to London for the weekend to stay with a friend who lives just off the Portabello road. The plan is to go and see Monkey, a Chinese opera thingy, and then dinner and on Sunday I'm going to a Spa near Paddington station......somewhere along the line I'd like to get a run in