When you can't deny you've been a complete tool!

If ever there was a morning of running that didn't go to plan, this was it.

Last night I got myself an early night after a healthy tea and no booze in order to wake up rested and fresh for parkrun this morning, which I had on as an "absolute all out effort". Before I went to bed I got out my shorts, my club vest, by little socks and my arm warmers. Proper "running fast" clobber. After all, if you're not freezing your arse off in January are you really even trying?

At 1:30am Leeloo decided that she needed to have what can only be described as a bloody good wuff. She doesn't normally do this but the last week or so she's been up and down in the night and so have I. Up I got, down I went, and ignoring her insistence that she needed to go into the garden to wake up all the neighbours I managed to get her settled on the sofa. Sides scritched, ears fluffled, blanket 

tucked right around her she clearly decided all was fine and went back to sleep. Until, that is, 4:30am when another bloody good wuff was needed. Up I got again, down I went again, more ear fluffing, side scritching, blanket tucking and general grumbling about how the last thing I needed was to be up at 4:30am when I was meant to be doing a hard parkrun.

Oh the irony, because, you see, today I absolutely did need to be up at 4:30am to do parkrun, or at least I would have needed to be up at 4:30am to do parkrun if I'd actually remembered I was meant to be on a plane to Dublin this morning with 20 or so other people heading out to do Malahide Parkrun in Ireland. Only I didn't remember, I totally and utterly bloody forgot. I went back to bed, got what sleep I could, and woke up at 7:00am feeling a bit grumpy about said lack of sleep.

But I was up and I was going to run hard. I looked out at the frost and shoved all the proper "running fast" clobber back in the drawer before shoving on several layers of thermals. On second thoughts, I reasoned, freezing your arse of in January is for the kids. It was only when I looked at facebook at 8:15am to see whether Long Eaton parkrun was going ahead despite the icy conditions (it wasn't) that I got my little reminder that I was meant to be in a different bloody country.

So here's a picture of the complete spanner walking said noisy dog on West Park this morning after a treadmill 5k in place of the parkrun that was cancelled which in turn was in place of the parkrun I forgot to get on a plane for. 

At least the 5k was done with a respectable amount of effort, mostly fuelled by irritation.