Running commute #5

In an attempt to get three runs in this week I pack my running rucksack the night before in preparation for a running commute, not forgetting to pack the essentials of my personal alarm and don’t fuck with me look, due to part of my route taking me up what is locally not very reassuringly known as Murder Mile.

And while I’m at work the managing partner comes round with this  year’s Christmas gift which is a very nice box of handmade biscuits, shortbread fingers, cinnamon stars, Belgian chocolates and a bottle of wine which is a vast improvement on last year’s box of soft centres.

But by 4 o’clock I seem to have accidentally eaten the whole packet of shortbread fingers but I think oh well, I need fuel for running don’t I and it gets to 5 o’clock and my boss says I can go home and I go to get changed and he says haven’t I got a coat and I say I’m just going to get changed, I’m running home tonight and he says oh, I was going to ask you if you wanted to go for a drink but obviously not and I think that’s weird, that’s twice in a week he’s asked me to go for a drink and he hasn’t asked me to go for a drink since last Christmas and I wonder if I can get out of it with the running commute excuse on Friday just in case he asks me again then and I think I’m going to look a right div changing into my running gear on Friday when everyone else is getting dressed up to go to the Christmas party which I’m not going to because a) I hate office parties; b) there is a very high risk I will get obscenely drunk and say something I shouldn’t; and c) my birthday is the next day and I don’t want to be hungover.

So I begin my running commute and a mile up the road I’m in Angel and I’m at the lights waiting for the cyclists to stop going through the red lights and then I’m at some more lights waiting for the cars to stop going through the red lights and I think is it National Go Through The Red Lights Day or what? and I continue down Upper Street and there’s a lot of people and I think to myself I should be grateful of the safety in numbers thing while it lasts because once I get to Hackney I’ll be on the street by myself because people in Hackney are too scared to leave their houses and I’m thinking is this running commute in the dark really a good idea and I’m thinking if a friend said she was going to run through Hackney in the dark I’d say noooooooooooooo, that is the worst idea ever ever ever, don’t do it and so I think maybe I should get on the train at Hackney Downs and then I get to Hackney Downs station and I carry on and then I’m surrounded by housing estates which is a bit scary and then I get to Murder Mile and a police car speeds down the road, siren wailing, and then I’m over the roundabout and not too far from home but there’s fields on both sides and it’s a bit scary and then I go past B&Q which no one has petrol bombed yet but surely it’s only a matter of time due to them being incompetent fools and just as Somerfield appears on the horizon I stop to do my shoelace up for the third time and I wonder if I’ve deserved a bottle of wine and I decide I probably have so I get one and then I’m home and I’ve done a running commute without walking most of it for the first time ever.

Today’s route

Stats:
Distance: 6.36 miles
Time: 1:20:49
Pace: 12:42
Calories: 557
Packets of shortbread fingers: 1
Shoelaces coming undone: 3
Walking breaks: 0
Music:
Hole
Mark Ronson
The Cure
Idle Vice Pirate
Hard-Fi