Ouch !

I've been experimenting a bit this week with the time of day that I go running, if I eat beforehand and how I feel energy wise...

The main reason for this is the level of tiredness I have been feeling... I know part of it is self inflicted and I really should go to bed earlier than I do but I also think that part of it could be down to what and when I eat....

Getting up and going running at 6:30am I find hard work, I enjoy it once I am going but I just feel so tired beforehand. So, I thought rather than running that early I would start work really early, eat breakfast and then take a break and go running mid morning.

Now this sounded like a really good plan but I had failed to take in to account a couple of factors. The first being the heat later in the morning, I know in England it doesn't get as hot as many other parts of the world but anything over 20C for me is HOT and any sensible person would tell you that it is far too hot to run in and you should really be sipping iced drinks by the side of a pool, or on the beach, in fact you should be doing just about anything other than running in the heat and sun.

The first part of the run was fine, I went my normal shade of bright pink and glowing... I reached the river and though that there may be a nice cool breeze. I was wrong, as I started running along the river bank I could feel the heat and humidity rising from the ground. In fact I am surprised that I didn't melt into a pool of pinkness on the ground.

The other thing that I didn't take into account was as the day heats up it brings out the insects. We are lucky in the uk that MOST insects we have are an annoyance rather than too painful but I found the exception to the rule and got bitten by some horse flies. If you havent been bitten by horse flies you may not realise but they hurt. Not only do they hurt but for relatively small things I think they must have enormous teeth because they left me with blood running down my leg. I tried wiping it away but it just kept bleeding. I gave up and just let it bleed (after all no-one has ever really suffered any substantial blood loss from a fly bite !)

The only other insect I have been bitten by that is more painful was a tsetse fly in Kenya..

So maybe the early morning runs aren't so bad after all !