Homeward bound.

Tue 29 Mar Newcastle University to Home 9.1m 1:08:17

I hate taking buses. They’re dirty, smelly and take forever to get anywhere. As I mentioned in the previous post the one-day Metro strike left me with two options on Tuesday night - a) get the bus home or b) run home. To avoid the misery of the number 308 bus, I chose to lace up my running shoes and complete the 9 miles on foot. I was a bit surprised by the amount of planning required. Remembering to pack my running gear in the morning for a start, which wasn’t easy considering most of it was in the dirty laundry. Then as I prepared to run it struck me that the contents of my coat pockets all needed to be locked away in my desk drawers overnight. Money, mobile phone, iPod (forgot to bring the handy clip to attach it to my shorts), the list just seemed to grow and grow. I even had to remove the unnecessary keys from my key ring for the night because they would have been to heavy to carry all the way home.

Anyway, I finally got myself ready and headed out into the unknown. I’ve been travelling from Monkseaton to Newcastle for more years than I care to remember but covering the distance on foot was a whole new experience. My biggest worry was the volume of traffic and how many roads I would have to cross. Initially this was quite a problem, it was difficult to get into any rhythm as I continually had to stop and wait at traffic lights for a safe time to cross the busy roads. However, once out of the city things became a little easier. The wonder of online street maps even enlightened me to a route through the quiet roads of Murton and onto a trail through the farmer’s field. This made the latter stages of the run much more pleasant, which was handy because by that stage I was definitely starting to suffer. The fact that this was my first run for a week probably didn’t help, but I also started to feel a pain on the inside of my knee. Slightly worrying but there are no after effects this morning so I’m hopeful it won’t hinder my training.

Overall, the whole run went quite well. Running through the city and alongside busy roads isn’t ideal but it allowed me to get my long run out of the way for the week. What’s more it meant I could spend the evening relaxing and settled down to watch Arsenal beat Juventus in the Champions League. This is something I’m definitely going to try and build into my weekly schedule and perhaps even try to fit in some lunchtime sessions. Hopefully my colleagues won’t mind sharing an office with a somewhat sweaty runner one afternoon a week.