welsh hills again

Strange times.  What to do?  What to say? I have written a blog on and off since 2007, less frequently in the last couple of years.  Who knows how long this crisis will last and what will happen but I have decided to record these strange days, for myself as a way  of ordering my thoughts, for my family and for anyone else who wants to read.  With luck it will be a reminder of how we lived in the time of coronavirus which we can look back on and wonder at from the sunlit uplands of a return to normal life. Monday 23rd March and the government makes an unprecedented declaration: "stay home", "protect the NHS", "save lives".  It had been clear for a week or more that this was coming.  Coronavirus had been spreading since it hit China in January.  We had been advised to "social distance", to "self isolate" if we had symptoms and we had watched the news reports as the virus swept through Italy and Spain.  Other countries in Europe were in...

The night before the Chester 10k I spent the whole evening grumping stompily about the house. What on earth was I thinking? Why on earth had I set myself up to do this? In November when we registered for the 10k my running was going well. Yes I was super slow but I was running three times a week and slowly getting faster and going further. Ian promised to run with me. There were months to go before the end of March. We had shared a bottle of wine and were sitting in bed with the details of the Chester 10k on the ipad. "Come on. I'll run with you," said Ian. Yes ok then, why not? But when March arrived nothing had gone to plan. I had taken five weeks off training with first a sore knee and then a chest infection. I had tried to get back and been running again for four or five weeks but I was way behind in what I had intended to do. The furthest I had run since starting again was 7k. I really didn't think I could do 10k. I was just going to embarrass myself. Stomp, ...