Frozen Cora

It was Saturday and this meant the usual route out to Cora. I'm definitely a man of routine and although Nick and Andy are away at the moment, the run out to Cora had to be done.

I'd run with Gill and Laurence the day before but today I was heading out by myself. I ran easily through town to begin with, wrapped up heavily since it was -1°C, and again my legs felt heavy as I tried to get them warmed up to turn over more quickly. I wasn't particularly worried about pace as this is one of my relaxing runs of the week. I was also capping off a big week in terms of disctance as I'd been running every day this week and was going to cover 80km including this run.

I ran down to the railway bridge and the puddles of the previous day had completely frozen over. I arrived just in time to see 2 cyclists crossing the bridge and the second man skidding on the ice, falling down heavily, cracking the ice and completely soaking the right-hand side of his body in close to freezing water. His cycling partner just laughed at him and as I pondered whether to make any remark, the poor guy looked so miserable that I just let it go.

I ran out to Cora, picking up speed as I went. I started to feel good before getting to the pond and was surprised by how little water there was in there. I was expecting to see a nice expanse of ice stretching over the usual pond, but instead there was patches of ice and large patches of earth which the water usually covers. What has been going on ?

I headed back up to La Pavillon de la Muette and then back home without any further mishaps. The forest was really lovely, covered in a layer of frost that glimmered in the early morning sun. I felt good to be out.

15km all up in 1:06:13 or 4:24 per km. 80km for the week.