When MJ left his job and joined my design business last November it meant no more epic trips to work for him as the design studio is at our house. This meant that I could get up in the morning and go for a walk. I started out walking and then tried the out jog/ walk combo. Then starting running more, then more, then all out.
I love it so much.
I have never been an outdoor person but I crave being outdoors running now. I even run in the rain. This is HUGE for me. The standing joke in our house is that I "melt" in the rain. I hate getting rain wet and we have a huge collection of umbrellas rattling around in the car boot, just in case.
Cue one morning in January. I get ready and walk outside. It's raining. The horror. I go back inside, then out again, then back inside. Like a yo-yo I could honestly not decide what to do. I went back in and googled what people do when they want to go for a run in the rain. For reals. This at 6.05am. Guess what? People still go running in the rain. I know, I was shocked too.
I did learn though (and this may be a handy hint for some of you) that if you put a T-shirt on, it's a bit better as your shoulders are a bit more covered. And wear a cap or visor to stop rain drips on your face. Armed with this knowledge I went out. And quite liked it! The cold (ish) rain was cooling on my red sweaty self.
Because I am an ugly runner. Beetroot red face, sweaty, the works. There is nothing pretty about my run. So really the last thing you want to do if you are me is have any kind of attention while you are running. This is normally fine as I run early and there's not a lot of traffic. The last hill I run up just before home is steep and is right along the main road. Like I said not usually a problem.
But as school traffic has increased every now and then there is a line of traffic up the very last hill I run up. At that stage of the run it's truly ugly. More like a hobble/ crawl than a majestic jog. So the very very last thing I would like in that queue of traffic is a bus. Filled with early morning commuters who like to look out the windows with this fabulous scenario...
The bus crawled past me up the hill. Bus stopped just ahead of me.
I huffed up the hill and very slowly past the bus with a thousand eyes on me.
Lights changed and the bus crawled past me again. Bus stopped just ahead of me.
I tried to blend with the concrete path as I stumbled up the hill past the bus AGAIN. Repeat 2 more agonising times before that @*% bus made it through the lights.
The moral of the story is that running keeps me humble. Happy but very very humble.
