22km to St Prex and back.

Saturday morning left the house at 6:45 children still beautifully asleep. Get to Nialls place 7:00 a.m. and ready to run. It was a cool day with the low hanging clouds just waiting to dump their reserves on us, made clothes selection tricky, I took a chance and went without the shell. My twitching muscles were excited to go for a 2 hour run, like a young pup who wants to chase down the squirrels in the forest and forgets his bearings I went out feeling great.

We headed down the usual path, over to Perroy and in mid conversation Niall interrupts me, it turns out we were approaching “the gate” and he was wondering when I would make a dash for it. Sorry, after my last racing deception I have to plan these things in advance and find the optimal distraction to get my head start.

We made our way through the beautiful Allaman river path. Up and down, in and out, over and many times under the low hanging branches from the weeks rain. The rain has a way of accentuating everything, even colors become brighter and more intense. Many times as we were running along there was pockets of strong smells, different flowers or plants huddled together , even the Kiwi plants were starting to release their pungent scent into the air.

With a comfortable and relaxed pace after 13km we made it to St Prex and when it dawned on me that this would mean a 26km run I got a little heavy hearted. To make matters worse not long after touching the infamous sign to which I have been initiated to the St Prex excursion tradition, Niall glanced at his watch and pulled a “Tenke” on me! I have to be back by 9:00 he tells me. Be back by 9:00 that means my nostrils were breathing dust going home. I tried and I tried to keep up as we approached km 18 and I was doing 4:28min/km I finally conceded that there are Jedi’s and there are Master Jedi’s as I read in a blog not long ago. However, this Jedi still managed to get back home and with a family very happy to see their papa with a handful of croissants, I recounted my morning whereabouts.

Later on that day I experienced the euphoria of physical exhaustion releasing its serotonin and other goodies into my bloodstream yielding 30 minutes of laugh attacks. Now that’s the life, when anything can happen and it’s still funny.