Merry Christmas one and all. Here we are again, it really doesn't seem like 2 minutes ago that we were sitting down to Christmas dinner last year, but there you go, I guess that's all part of getting older and leading a full and fulfilling life.
Whilst Christmas in its current form is worthy of celebration in itself, (although I'm not a fan of the over commercialisation, greed, and insistence on buying each other a load of old tat that you don't want or need) it's not what we've always celebrated at this time of year. In fact, even before the Church got involved and allocated the date to the birth of Christ, we were busy making merry and celebrating at this time of year. But why were we busy making merry in the middle of winter? Well, apart from the obvious. That it's dark early and there's not much else to do. We're actually celebrating the fact that things are getting better from here on in! Yes, that's right, were over the hump and from here on in the days are getting longer, the evenings are getting lighter and before we know it, we'll all be back in shorts and t shirts, spending the evenings on the allotment and playing out. Wednesday, marked the Winter solstice and thus the shortest day, so whilst traditionally the worst of the winter is still to come, there's definitely something to start looking forward too, and that's exactly what I'll be using the remaining dark winter days for. There's seed catalogues to pour over, whilst I decide what delicacies I'm going to grow on the allotment next year. There's running and cycling adventures to dream up and plan, even if they never see the light of day or come to fruition. A couple of hours dreaming and looking at maps is never wasted time. And there's future projects to plan. In fact, the first part of next years calendar is already starting to fill up with running and cycling event's, and there's still lots of other's that I'm undecided about. As always, the problem tends to be fitting in all the things that I want to do, not finding things to fill the time with, which is a nice position to be in. At the end of the day, we need to make the most of every day and opportunity, because you never know what's around the next corner. I can't imagine that there are many people that spend their final days saying "I wish I'd done less with my life" but I'd wager that there's plenty that say the opposite! I often sit in the quieter moments and wonder where the times gone, or think that I haven't done much today / this week / this year, and then I glance back though this blog and realise that that's not quite true. I only ever write about the interesting things (or maybe that should be, the things that I find interesting, you can be the judge of whether I'm right or not) but I always seem to have something to write about so I guess that I must be doing something to fill my days. To that end, I noticed at the start of the month that I was approaching a bit of a milestone on the running front. I may have mentioned in one of my posts earlier in the month that I put in a couple of extra runs to work and back, to rack up a few extra miles, and surprisingly that milestone arrived today, more through chance than any real planning, when I passed through 2000 miles of running for the year. That's the highest accumulated mileage that I've ever managed, and there's still a few days of the year to go yet. In fact, todays gentle 10 mile run (well, I needed to build up an appetite for my Christmas dinner) took me to 2009 miles, which by my shoddy maths comes in at an average of 5 and 1/2 miles per day! (and I spend far more time cycling than running). I don't think that that's a bad effort, in fact I'm pretty pleased with that. It's not always been easy. We've had too hot, too cold, too windy, to wet and too dry. But at the same time there's been some marvellous runs in amongst the day to day training and slogs to work and back. There's been some successes and failures too! But either way, the running's done for today, and having built up an appetite, I'm going to enjoy my Christmas dinner with "The Emma" (steak and chips in case your interested), I'm going to light the fire and then I'm going to sit on the sofa, with a well deserved glass of beer, and reflect on those 2000 miles whilst dreaming of next years adventures. Happy Christmas every one!
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Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
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