The meaning of life

Standard fare for a Tuesday morning: 7:00 am alarm, slip running gear on, 5 minutes later out of the house and off for the morning run.

Well that's the plan. I omitted the fact that I have to reset the alarm for 45 minutes later in order to wake up Laurence so that she can open the gate for me when I return. And the delay caused by me waiting for the Garmin to synchronise with the number of satellites necessary to position me on this planet. But apart from that, the plan is simple.

The run was fairly uneventful. 2 km in 8:35 so slower than last week. The mornings are cooler at the moment and there was only a slight breeze. No excuses on the weather front for not achieving a good time. The legs weren't convinced by these arguments though and it was one of those days where I ran and spent a lot of time thinking about why I really bothered.

Conversation in my head went something like this:
"You could be lying in bed now, catching a few minutes more precious sleep"
"All this running and training: what good does it actually do you ? It hurts running at this speed"
"So, you're fitter than you were last year, but what good does this actually do ?"
"So you can run a 10k in under 40 minutes. So what ? And you've lost a few kilos in weight, if you ate a little less then you could have achieved this anyway" ... and so it went on.

I don't remember any point in the run today where it was actually a pleasure to be out. My legs were tired, I was slower than last week, and mentally it was tough.

And the result ? 11.1 km in 47:15.

I rang the bell and then waited 5 minutes for Laurence to wake up and the gate to finally open. I hadn't reset the alarm after all, I'd only advanced the clock time by 45 minutes instead.

Thank God for breakfast - the highlight of the morning !