This morning, I awoke to a beautiful scene of iced-over
cars and 0 degree weather. (I know if anybody’s reading in Canada I’ve probably
just described summer, but this is cold for us.) I’d decided the night before
that if in the morning it was cold and icy that I wouldn’t run for safety
reasons (remember the scene in Bambi where he goes on the ice for the first
time? That’s me on normal surfaces – imagine what happens when I go on the ice!
I’ve been ice-skating once in Germany, and genuinely within the first thirty
seconds I’d fallen over three times and hurt my back so that I couldn’t lie
down without it hurting for the next four days. It sounds silly but I wasn’t
expecting the ice to be as slippery as it was).
The flaw in this plan is that all the windows in our flat
face backwards, away from the road, so it’s impossible to tell what the road
and pavement surfaces were like. To see this would involve leaving the flat,
and naturally this is the sort of thing generally best done dressed in normal
clothes. (Protip: wearing clothes is generally more socially acceptable than
not doing so). And since if it was nice I would be going jogging, I decided to
don my running attire to go and see what Jack Frost had done.
(I don’t think I’ve described my running outfit – it
definitely needs a bit of a renovate since it consists entirely of the only
clothes I have here that aren’t completely inappropriate for running. The main
issue is that the outer layer when it’s cold is a black pair of tracksuit
trousers and a navy blue raincoat, meaning that I’m almost entirely black when
I step out into the dark mornings. It’s like being the Dark Knight, except
instead of travelling by Batmobile I’m travelling by a light jog, meaning that
I can’t protect Gotham’s streets, but maybe just one street. As long as it’s a
fairly short street.)
Having stepped outside, I saw that everything was
glistening with a lovely glow that suggested going back to bed. The issue was
that I had now stepped outside, and it felt a bit like giving up to go back at
that point. So, knowing even then that it was almost definitely a bad idea to
go, I decided to go.
I was very careful this time. I remembered a part of the
route that wasn’t too icy the last time I went out in cold weather and followed
this round for a smallish loop back to my house, and just repeated this. I took
everything very slowly as well, meaning that distance-wise this was probably my
shortest run yet, around 2 miles total distance travelled.
All in all, I managed to keep my feet almost the whole
way round – there was just one Bambi moment when I inadvertently crossed the
road and went over a puddle that gave me flashbacks of Germany (the ice rink
incident, not like a flashback of when I was in ‘Nam). But I stayed more or
less upright and vowed to avoid it in future. (Protip: if you find yourself
slipping on ice whilst out for exercise, why not consider going home and having
a bath instead? Much warmer and slightly less dangerous).
I haven’t even mentioned the running yet. This week is
two iterations of 90 seconds running followed by 90 seconds walking, followed
by 3 minutes of running and 3 minutes of walking. And I’m astonished to say
that the first three minute running session was actually not too bad. I
completed it without counting down the seconds, and actually thought that I
might be able to do the second lot of three minutes without feeling too bad as
well.
Well, what do I know? I went running in the ice, for
goodness sake! The second 3 minutes was definitely more of an endurance test –
I guess it means I wasn’t really thinking about the 90 second one, which was
the big fear last week, so maybe Laura’s tricking me into being fit. I still
don’t really trust her. She said some ridiculous things and played some ridiculous
music this week, but I should probably get ready for university now instead of
typing.
I did have the fun experience at the end of the run of
walking down a sidestreet which had one of those vents spewing steam out,
meaning that I got to finish by appearing out of a cloud of smoke (I like to
think).
I’m the relay runner that Gotham deserves, but not the
one that it needs right now.
I am Baton-man.
(Aka Bruce Sprain)
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