Another Marathon Gone!

Well, I'm not going to be doing Seville.
The cost of flights shot up in the week before I decided I would be fit enough and I have decided to run the Stamford 30k on February 11 instead. A total budget of £400 to run a marathon wasn't part of the plan. My marathon will now be in Rotterdam on April 15 and I can run the Finchley or Ashby 20's on March 18.
My 90 year old mum has just been diagnosed with cancer of the gullet and with tests and treatment plans to be discussed I needed to engineer another opportunity to see her before leaving on holiday on Feb 13. The choice of Stamford puts me 18 miles away from Spalding where she lives.
I haven't raced since December 17 and with the Christmas period out of the way I have steadily increased my mileage. I am determined to run 200 miles or more in this mildest of Januaries and I am well on target to do this. The long runs have started feeling easier and the mid distance runs are getting faster.
Long runs do etch themselves on the memory as they give you time to think and your heightened senses seem to "absorb" the world better. I also find they feel like an expression of your individuality when you complete them alone. You are just running and running and running and the rest of the world passes by oblivious to how far you have come and how far you are going. It just seems to place you in a sort of parallel existence.
Last week I did a 15 miler midweek and a 13.5 hilly run on Sunday. This latter one was on a glorious sunny morning on the lanes through some nearby villages and hamlets immediately to the north of where I live. Although the countryside is not truly hilly, my run took me through two hilltop villages and down into the three valleys around them. Thus I got 1000 feet of climbing in and finished after 2 hours feeling pretty pleased with myself, as the pace was slightly below a sub 4 marathon.
Today's run was a real epic though. Yesterday I took a day off as my achilles tendon was showing signs of regressing to the state of soreness and stiffness that I suffered with in September. This was probably due to me "burning up" an 8 mile tempo run at 8 minute mile pace the night before! My willpower was severely tested by listening to the evolving weather forecast - damaging gale force winds and heavy rain for today! Despite the banging windows this morning, I decided "to hell with it" and decided on an off road meander along the Wendover Arm of the Grand Union Canal, up onto the Ridgeway path and back through Wendover Woods. There weren't many dog walkers out - and no wonder. The squally weather had brought to a climax the "thinning" of many trees that has been going on for a couple of weeks now, and all the paths were extremely muddy. Those on the steeper slopes of the Chilterns were virtual waterfalls! As I ran up out of Wendover onto the Ridgeway, the full force of the wind was whipping the bare beech and oak trees into a manic waving frenzy accompanied by a moaning and the occasional disconcerting crack. On several occasions I had to hurdle recently fallen trees and large boughs. The rain when it came was fierce and mostly horizontal, but it wasn't and eventually in the last mile the sun came out.
I love runs like these. There is a sort of highly private primeval pleasure in them. You start off clad in all your high-tech gear, relatively comfortable and after about a mile your shoes are muddy and full of water, your shorts are sodden and that waterproof is hanging lankly. 20 minutes later and you look down at your legs to see they are a salmon pink colour from the wind and rain. You have no time to think of how you are feeling as all your attention is focused on your route and where to put your feet. An hour into the run and this is all that matters, and a glow of satisfaction grows from coping with the demands being put on you by terrain and weather. I finished the last downhill mile back to my car in an almost euphoric state. Did anyone see me clap my hands and shout out "Yes, yes, yes!"? If they did they had the tact to keep themselves hidden from this middle aged loonie.
But the trees were quite scary - at one point in Wendover Woods I came across a birch that had been cleaved in two, one half still waving manically in the storm, the other half blocking the trail. I nervously looked up at the others around it as I straddled over the branch and continued on my way. How do you know which one will fall next? The hand of fate stayed away, than goodness.
I know from the runners' forum that I contribute to, Fetcheveryone, that many, indeed most, runners seem to stay on the roads or the treadmill and some even have issues with "getting shoes dirty". They are missing out. Offroad running on a foul day is as good as on a beautiful sunny day. In fact it's always fun, challenging and exhilarating in a way that running on the road can never be - not to mention a treadmill!
I think I'll hit the woods again tomorrow - or should I ration this pleasure?