Dead swans and eating glue

Got up way too early this morning, to get the run done.

I'd foolishly agreed to go to Ikea, and since I hate the place, I wanted to get there before it got too full of idiots who don't know how to walk in a straight line.

As it was a bit chilly, and my hair is a state, I decided to don a baseball cap. For those that don't know me, let me explain that this is strange on a couple of levels.

1. I'm not sporty, and think they look ridiculous
2. My head is abnormally large and hats tend not to fit me - this one doens't either, but it's the best I've been able to do.
   

So, I got going, and fell into a comfy pace pretty quickly, which I was pleasantly surprised with as that hasn't happened before in this marathon bid.

Unlike most of my other runs, the Sunday morning one is less like running the gauntlet as the pathless roads have little traffic. The roads with paths have little traffic too, but I don't have the luxury of many of them. I just didn't want you thinking people round here don't drive on roads on Sunday mornings unless they have paths.

I digress..

So I got plodding away nicely, and as the ground was frozen, I was able to run right next to the river, which would normally be lovely, but for the fact the wind was freezing.

After a couple of miles, the wide riverbank narrows on a bend, and you're funneled along a normally treacherous couple of hundred yards where the path is about a foot wide, and composed mainly of mud.

Confident the frosty conditions would mean it was at least solid, I decided to give it a whirl instead of jumping onto the road.

As I was approaching the narrowing part, I saw what I thought was a small pile of detrius from the river.

It wasn't.

It was the decomposing body of a swan.

Now, I don't know about you, but I've never seen that before, but I'm confident it was a swan as despite all the feathers, and most of it's flesh having gone, there was clearly a large body, long neck, and beak.

I thought about taking a pic to share with you, but I think a fair few people would have got cross with me...

Anyway, I passed the swan, and carried on along the river. After another mile or so, there's a choice - follow the road to get up to the main road, or carry on along the river and see what happens.

As you can probably tell by the end of that last bit, I normally follow the road. For some reason I was feeling a bit adventurous and plodded along the unknown road.

Now, I'd like to say I found a magical world where everyone is happy, and poverty has been relegated to the history books, but it was pretty much just the same as the other bit I'd been running along. Just the road veered off a bit later and joined the same stretch I was heading to anyway.

There was an exiting looking footpath that carried on - heading somewhere magical, no doubt - but I'll save that adventure for another day.

I may have mentioned that I hate Ikea - it was the shadow looming over my run.

I had to get back, showered etc and ready to head off by a certain time, so I'd told myself that I'd run for so long, then turn round.

I also knew I'd be out for a while, so on an impulse I'd bought a sachet of weird energy gel, to try after an hour to see if it helped.

Well, I thought I'd give it a try, and tentatively opened the foil wrapper, wondering how tropical this could possibly taste.

In it's defence, it did have a tropical flavour.

However, no amount of pineapples and mangoes could hide the fact that it had the consistency of glue.

After my initial reaction I thought it best to be a man and just see it all off, so, still running, I chugged the whole thing down, responsibly disposed of the wrapper in a bin I'd seen approaching, and nearly threw up.

Nice.

Might need a bit more practice with these things.

Anyway, after almost heaving last nights tea overs the streets of Surrey, I carried on until my self imposed turning around point, and headed for home.

The only incident on the way back was a slow-hitting stitch that was threatening most of the way, but only decided to get me with only about half a mile from home.

To spite my body, I decided to run flat out home, which was horrible, but I think I made my point - stupid body.

After warm down, and shower, I then headed off to Ikea only to realise that when I'd been assured it opened at 10, they'd actually meant "I think it's 10". So, when we rocked into the car park at 9:40 and saw it actually opened at 11, I was not a happy bunny.

At least they did the nice thing and let people in at 10, but you couldn't pay for owt for an hour.

It was like being trapped in hell.

In Scandanavia.

So I'd truncated my run (not a lot, but still annoying) for no reason other than to spend time in a large blue and yellow warehouse off the north circular.

I can see Sunday's not being my fave day.