recovery run

I am not a big fan of being under the weather. Flu or Lyme Disease; the jury may always be out on that one, but again like last time I am fairly sure it was a run in with Lyme Borreliose. It dragged on too long for a normal flu and Mary hasn't caught it from me. I started taking the online antibiotics on Monday, and Wednesday was my first day without munching handfuls of paracetamols. It is slowly leaving me, but I am still sleeping lots.

(Check out Bruce Mathieson's fb page for pics of the ploughing.)

Just as well as I had a big day planned for Thursday. The weather forecasters said it was going to be the only sunny day before the 27th - the cut off for October's TB run. I hadn't run all week - I had spent a lot of the time in bed snoozing. But was fairly sure I could knock out a slow 30 miler if I caught the bus to West Linton and took a gentle route through (and over) some Pentlands and back the WoL. I managed to get up 8am, eat breakfast, and had all my equipment laid out on the bed ready to pack and catch the 9.25 bus. It was unnaturally dull outside so I double checked the forecast. It had changed overnight from sunny all day to drab with a couple of blips of sun. I could probably manage a long run in decent weather but if it was going to be cloudy I could wait till the beginning of the week. I put my sandwiches in the fridge, went back to bed and slept most of the day. I cursed the weather-people. Mary reckons they've all been sacked except for one guy who has a Suunto or some altitude / barometer watch and he does the weather on his own now and is pretty much just guessing. Maybe I dodged a bullet - I will find out on Tuesday as that looks like the last remaining pleasant weather before I am timed out of October's TB and the 4 year project goes down the pan.

The Saturday weather was unspectacular. There was a quiet loveliness - and a lack of wind that made the place calm and pleasant - but I had a feeling it was too subtle a beauty to catch on the camera. A squadron of swans flew overhead and the tide was pretty low. Which meant we could run below the rocks at Archerfields, between waves. 

Both of us suddenly caught the unmistakable whiff of death. There was something large and dead on the shore but the light breeze seemed to be teasing us with just an occasional fragrant whiff and then nothing. Mary usually smells things - gas, burning cooking, spirits of the afterlife - way before I do, and I suggested she apply her finest olfactory gifts to locate the dead beast that we may squeal "OMG" and take photos. We followed the smell down the wind and cirled back on ourselves but were eventually forced to give up. We also felt we may be walking along the back of a giant carcass unable to see it under a layer of shells, barnacles and sand. It eluded us. Probably just as well.

We ran the Archerfields 10+ miler but back to front as the wind was atypically from the East. So all along the beach from Archerfields to Aberlady it was gently coaxing us along, and we didn't really notice it in the shelter of the JMW back through the golf course.

Along at the other end of Aberlady, the driftwood artists had been busy. Something of the ship and something of the funeral pyre, which inspired Mary to have a lie down while I mooched around taking photos.

Just over the bridge at Aberlady and heading back to Gullane we passed my brother Neil, out on a bike for the first time in ages having been distracted by his work for a few too many weeks. We offered him a lift back into Edinburgh as the dark grey clouds were looming, but he preferred to cycle. As we ran back through the golf course and the clouds grew bigger and darker we wondered about how much of a soaking he was in for. (One wee shower.) We got back to the berlingo (which has been going pretty well and starting with regular monotony - shhh don't jinx it) before the rain started properly, and we hurried home via tesco's.

meanwhile the same three deer in the field opposite the clubhouse
and looming clouds behind.