Actually not wearing my On running shoes today, but rather my new Hokas.
Yes, a second pair in defiance of Simon’s recommendation and the old trend of nude running shoes, designed to imitate running with bare feet. Talk about the Emperor’s new clothes! The new style of giant cloud-like soles took a bit of getting used to style-wise but they are lovely to wear, and I’ve had no recurrence of my ankle pain since using them. The proof is in the pudding (the eating (of the pudding)? There’s a pudding somewhere in the proverb, anyway.)
I didn’t have to bribe Max to stay at home, she has learned to recognise my preparations for going for a run and at some point she will hide under the bed. She’s never actually been on a run so she’d rather hide than be put in her crate, even with a tasty treat. Interesting.
Maggie either enjoys the runs or is too stupid to tell the difference between my preparations for a run and those for a walk. In any event, she happily picks up the pace when I step out of the gate and set off. I don’t know why it had never occurred to me to run on the beach? Obviously you have to get the tides right so that you’re running on compact damp sand rather than the dry stuff further up the beach. Also I still have embedded in my consciousness that Maggie will run up to people and bark, even though she has turned over a new leaf lately. She has clearly decided that one problem child in the family is enough, and now that Cat dog has taken over that mantle, she can now be the angel of the family. Finally her deportment matches her gorgeous appearance. So, now I can let her off the lead when running on the beach, and she won’t bother anyone. She can run in and out of the water to her heart’s content. She even leaves the oyster catchers alone.
As I jogged along happily to One Direction playing on my EarPods (Top 100 running songs, thanks Spotify, although I could do with less Taylor Swift), I remembered something my dad said to me on one of the rare occasions we went running together when I was back home in my early twenties. He liked my running style, it wasn’t typical of the women he’d seen. He meant this as a compliment. These were the days when you’d see women on TV running in high heels even when in deep peril, being chased by the bad guy. I was chuffed, as shown by the fact that I remember it still.
This thought led me to another. Dad was only three years older than I am now when he died while out jogging. Mind blowing. I’m struggling to wrap my head around it still. It doesn’t put me off running, but it’s a good reminder to keep up with my statins.
I watched a movie last night about a woman who inherited a friend/long term celebrity crush’s Great Dane. It was a problem because she lived in a tiny New York apartment that didn’t allow dogs. Of course, she gradually fell in love with the dog and couldn’t give it up, a classic trope of the genre. What annoyed me was the films focus on the dead friend, a famous writer and womaniser who left a trail of unhappy women behind to mourn him. I kept waiting for someone to realise he was an asshole and not worth the pain, but it never happened. He was played by Bill Murray, who can certainly do charismatic and magnetic, so I guess that’s what they were going for. Disappointing, but the dog got its happy ending so I won’t complain.