This weekend has been my belated birthday weekend with a trip to Birmingham to spend some time on our flat together and do nice city sort of things. We saw Animal Farm at the theatre last night which was just a brilliant production. It felt very weird being amongst people and we weren’t sure we would go right until the last minute. Honestly, I was disappointed at the lack of mask wearing overall but that’s a whole different blog post. We planned to get out for a run this morning and we woke up relatively early but had a lazy morning sipping coffee and watching gulls out of our apartment window. They still confuse me slightly, I associate gulls with seaside – and we’re in Birmingham.

Eventually we decided we would still do our planned run to have a look at the route and see what it’s like. It looked like a nice day outside and it seemed a real shame to miss the sunshine. We set off without any pre-set intervals for run/walking and I think I only ran for very short periods of time and annoyingly it wasn’t at all long before my feet started to be sore. Still, it was nice to be plodding along the canal. It was relatively busy with cyclists, runners and walkers but there is something familiar about canal running. After roughly 1.5 miles we crossed the canal and doubled back a little before heading off along the road up to Edgbaston Reservoir. My feet really hurt here and I got a bit grumpy. I was grumpy because it hurt, because I wanted to run (and felt like I could if it weren’t for my feet) and because this wasn’t what I had envisaged when we set off. It was tempting to just give up and turn round and go home. But I wanted to see the reservoir. I wanted to know whether this was a route worth persevering with and whether I can run it safely on my own.

We walked the road part until we found the route onto the path going round the reservoir. We watched some coots and ducks go about their Sunday and I played with my laces a bit to see if the would help my feet. Then we made our way clockwise round the reservoir. I ran a bit more on this part of our adventure and that felt good. We stopped every now and again to look at things and lingered for a while when we saw a heron. I was so glad that I didn’t just turn back, I would have missed the heron.

We plodded the rest of the loop with one or two walk breaks thrown in and then ran down the first stretch of road downhill. Then we walked home mostly. We did have one little jog towards the end because we couldn’t be bothered to stop to chat to the Canal and River Trust people (sorry) so it was easier to just run past and as it was all downhill, it was easy enough to just keep going. As we were running that last bit I suddenly remembered that I had joined a January strava challenge to do 10km and I hadn’t yet run or walked the distance. We therefore walked around the block a bit – it actually ended up being useful because the road locally is closed for a stretch and we were wondering where we needed to go when we drive home tomorrow. Now we know because we walked it.

We ended our adventure at Saint Kitchen where we grabbed a takeaway bagel and a brownie which we enjoyed with coffee at home. It might not have been the run I wanted and I do really need to sort my feet but it was a nice adventure and a route I will definitely run again and it was lovely to spend some time together in the city. We have had a lazy afternoon other than doing a few bits in the apartment. This evening we are going to see The Lost Words: Spellsongs at Symphony Hall which I am really looking forward to. It’s been a very good weekend in the city.