My friend's beautiful 12 year-old daughter, at that in-between stage, still a little girl but also a girl becoming a woman. Playfulness mixed with very strong opinions.
So today I got up with dread, knowing that I was going to run 5km on a road for the first time. It seemed a daunting prospect, like going to the principal's office, and I prepared carefully, wearing shorts (I usually wear long cotton trousers tucked into socks to prevent ticks crawling up my legs), socks that are not too thick so that your toes go numb after a while, nor too thin that the socks gradually slide down your foot into your shoe. I only have two pairs of socks which fit this description, which are perfect. I also wore an old swimsuit top to help with the bouncing, and a vest over that. On my head a green Celtics fan cap backwards, to keep the hair out of my face, and the last accessory, sunglasses. I parked, locked my car, hid the key under a rock, stretched a few times, and off I went!
It was beautiful, marshes on either side, just a few houses lodged atop small knolls, a million tree swallows perched on the telephone wires, taking off in formations as I approached with my rhythmic clapping tread, a sound I am unused to hearing.
After the first downhill I could see the end, around the bend, and it didn't look too far. I made it there and back easily, and changed my mind about just doing it once today, as Tim had suggested. But halfway there, I hit a wall again, and had to hurl myself forward to various helping hymns pounded out by the voice in my head (this could be a poem, did you see all the 'h' alliteration in that sentence?). When I got to the car, (the last uphill is killing), it was exactly 40 minutes since I began. (Nick can do 5km in less than half my best time!)
The Fun Run begins at 6.30 and the awards ceremony is at 7.30, so hopefully I will make it before that begins.
My knees are a bit tender though, unaccustomed to that hard road. So I will train both in the meadow and on the road. After doing a bit of research into training for a 5km run, I am going to run every other day until the actual race.
This afternoon, remembering a beach chair in the garage that someone gave me, I duly folded it and loaded it into the car, only to discover when I was unfolding it on the beach, a stranded Daddy-Long-Legs spider, who leaped on to the hot sand and immediately started struggling with Death. So I picked her up by one leg, very gently, (she went absolutely limp when this happened) and carefully walked to the dunes, which enjoy a plentiful vegetation of beach-roses and various beach-grasses. I cautiously set her down and she thought a bit, then came to life and took off rapidly in the right direction, away from the beach. I hope she makes it, such a different habitat from the corner of a cool garage. Or perhaps she will become a partial meal for one of the beautiful tree swallows I see there all the time.
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