Or should that be ‘can I make myself go’. That’s been the question on my mind all day. I’d said I would try again today – not the 11 miles but a 45 minute run along one of our normal routes. Not first thing thought because, quite frankly, I was exhausted yesterday and we wanted to go to a plant sale. We then also went out for lunch so without even trying I’d easily put the run off until late afternoon at least. At 5pm ish I knew I wouldn’t be able to drag it our forever. I went and sat on our bed for a while and just stared out over the valley.Then I decided it was time. I was nearly sick. I was about to put myself through this whole bloody thing again. It would be so easy to just stop, blame the dodgy calf muscles, the knees – I might try again when I’ve lost some more weight…

I got changed. I came downstairs. Kath gave me a hug, ran upstairs and got changed. Then she grabbed her backpack which made me panic because I thought we were only going for 45 minutes which doesn’t require a backpack. She opened it and pulled out Paul the duck – the wood duck she bought me yesterday to cheer me up. Then she declared that Paul was coming with us on our 45 minute run. She took the the backpack just so we could take Paul.

We set off. My right calf muscle was tight but ok. It was fine. I was putting one foot in front of the other. Then suddenly Kath said we’d take a walk break. So we did. We’d run 2.5 minutes. We walked for a minute. We did that a couple of times. It was fine, still putting one foot in front of the other. Then came the hill up to the golf course – one foot in front of the other and the top of the slope came. Breathing heavily but not huffing and puffing.

I hate going downhill at the best of times and going down the golf course was a bit scary. Towards the bottom I said I was scared so Kath just grabbed my hand and we ran a few steps hand in hand. We turned onto the canal. I still felt ok. I was aware that our pace was very very slow but I felt fine and that was what this was all about. The canal was glorious this evening with the light bouncing off the water, the fields looking a gorgeous green and the greens of the trees just beginning to show hints of autumnal colours. We turned round and I was now confident I’d get to the end. My leg was a little sore and my left knee had shown signs of niggles but it was all discomfort rather than pain so gritted teeth it was – the stop start of the run/walk intervals seemed to make it worse so I decided to just keep running. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be ale to keep it up to the end but I could always take a walk break if I needed one.

Then I saw it, in fact I think we saw it at the same time, a flash of brilliant colour, just above the water, coming from behind us and streaking past – the kind of blue and orange that can only be a kingfisher. It is so rare to see one and we haven’t seen one on that part of the canal for years. We got a really good view of it as it flew past us and then into the trees at the side of the canal. I ran the rest of our route with a big smile and even managed to pick up the pace a little on the last 7 minutes. We did just over 3.5 miles in the 45 minutes. Slow I thought, but lovely.

I’ve had a bath and I’ve got a bag of frozen peas on my calf as I type – as a precaution more than anything else. I’m ok. One foot in front of the other.

Oh and it is Sunday. That means weigh in! I lost 2.5 pounds. All good.