Week 5 complete! Yay. Today was such a mental battle. It wasn’t so much the getting out because we had already decided we were going to Bolton Abbey to run. It was such a gorgeous morning so in a way the getting out bit was easy. It was a bit chilly though. According to the car it was 4 degrees (centigrade) when we left the house and 2 when we arrived at Bolton Abbey. But the sun was out and I felt positive. I was creaky – I ran and did the first HIIT workout in forever yesterday so that’s perhaps not surprising. I decided to walk a couple of minutes before easing myself into my 30/30 run/walk intervals. I made my way up the first slope and at the top- ish I set of for the first run. It felt like running through treacle.

I could see Kath ahead and she had chosen the top path and I decided to follow her and get the slopes out of the way early. Making my way up to the top path felt impossible. My legs were heavy, my lungs burning and it felt like I was going backwards. I just made it to the top, turned right and realised that there was no downhill now. The path just sort of undulates upwards for a bit. Just as I was thinking about whether just a nice walk might be the better option today a tall runner came cheerfully striding towards me and beamed a big ‘hello’ at me. Somehow that really cheered me up and gave me enough resolve to keep going a bit. I was pondering the various meanings of ‘undulating’ in running commentary and race descriptions to try and take my mind off things but every step felt so hard. It was like I had to force my brain to force my legs to keep moving and my legs were saying no and my brain was saying no – mutiny all round.

At about half a mile the light caught my eye. I was mid way through a walk, I stopped the watch to just admire it for a bit and take a couple of photos (they don’t really do it justice). I was stopped for less than a minute, I was still puffing but I thought I might as well do a little more and shortly after another runner came flying round the corner with a little brown dog and I got another happy ‘Morning!’. Both of the runners I saw on the top path early on seemed content in their runs and cheery and like they were enjoying themselves. Somehow that helped me focus more on the positives of my run – being out, autumnal clear air, the light, the colours… . I dropped back down onto the main path down by the river to head back towards the car park. I hit a mile and the running sort of settled down and just was.

As I got closer to the car park, it got quite busy and I am clearly getting closer to my life goal of being a grumpy old woman. Groups walking together all seemed to need the entire path, dogs were mostly not under control, dogs on long leads were waddling across the path so I had to hurdle the lead, families were walking taking up all the path and just stared at me when I said ‘excuse me’ from a distance and then ‘excuse me, can I just come through please’ meaning I had to zig zag my way through. I was pissed off by the time I got to the last stretch before the Cavendish Pavilion and went through the same process and got no reaction, no attempt to move dog on lead or 3 small children to one side to leave enough room for me to get past. So I just said ‘Excuse me, please can I come past you’ for the 3rd time and when nothing happened I snapped ‘I am not stopping!’. As I said that one of the children told their mum to move out of the way and shifted creating just enough space. The mum shouted something after me and it is probably just as well I didn’t hear it. To be clear – this is not a single file path – this is a path where you can easily walk 4-5 next to each other so making space for me to come through was really not a big deal and they were coming towards me and I was already tucked away on one side – so no excuse really.

I was glad to clear the gate and continue towards the car park where there was actually space to avoid people. My plan said 2.5 miles but I had told myself that I could stop at 2 as I am still one run behind from week 4. But I figured I might as well get the 2.5 done given that I was out and not completely dead yet. I ran alongside the river on the wet grass and there was something rebellious and fun about running on the grass getting wet feet. My watch was running out of battery and when it leaves the battery warning across the screen so you can’t see any of the stats so I knew it had beeped for 2 miles and I knew I was going really slow. I sort of guessed that if I did another 8 runs after the 2 mile beep I should be round about 2.5 miles if I was guessing my pace about right. Turns out I wasn’t far off at all – Garmin said 2.51 and Strava being Strava stole a bit and makes it bang on 2.5 miles. Week 5 done. Happy.