Go West

Plymouth Sound
Distance: 2 and three-quarter miles (really?)
Duration: roughly 30 minutes
Time: 6.20am

I actually ran up the Mayflower steps, into the Old World. Maybe that's where I belong.

Actually, I ran up the steps next to the "Mayflower Steps," those were steps that led up from the car park in the marina. And those aren't even the real Mayflower Steps, the atucal stone steps Francis Drake descended on his journey to the New World are reportedly in the women's loo in the pub across the street.

I followed the water around the Barbican, up through the city, and back down the West Hoe (yes) making a full circle. It was a fantasy of mine that I would finish by the lighthouse, run down the steps to the ocean, and take an insane, frigid plunge into the Atlantic.

But the tide was out. That would have been an uncomfortable, long wade. I would have looked not like a man triumphant, but rather someone determined to drown himself.

It was a good, brisk run. Two runs in Britain. Worth bringing the shoes.

Not The Route What I Ran

Euston Trial
Distance: more like 5 miles
Time: 6.30am

It has been 19 days since the operation. It has been almost a month since I ran. We were up last night until about 1 am. There so many reasons not to run today, but one too few, apparently.

Mapped you can see the route I took, kind of. Down Euston to Regent's Park, down to and around the London Zoo and back. I got a little turned around after the zoo, ran out to Park Road but then followed that back to a park entrance. It was lovely and I was in no hurry - except that I have gotten a bit out of shape and was a little hot and weary. And I itch. Down there.

City running is very odd. Yesterday I lamented to folks who could only run on their lunch hour, from the look of it, fighting tourists and others as they squeezed their way through the crowds of St. James Park, or on the pavement. The last time I ran that route it was before business hours and I had the park to myself and the other runners. There are an awful lot of runners in central London.

I stepped out of my hotel in time to catch a man and a woman going my direction, which was helpful, as I followed their lead down the city street, watching where they looked, and where on the pavement they kept their path. Not that there's much of a science to it, we're all salmon swimming upstream, dodging cars, people and other obstacles until we reach THE PARK, whatever park that may be. Returning, after seven on a Tuesday, I was like those folks yesterday in St. James, saying "excuse me" and trying not to get struck by a streetsweeper.