Spring in the air

Thirty miles in two days, all of them run in cold, sleety, driving rain. I ran 17 yesterday in full fell running gear and still felt uncomfortably cold on the ridge above Berhamsted, where I was participating in one of the Gede Valley Harriers' London Marathon training runs (five quid to enter, tea and cake at the finish and some of the coldest, wettest, most seriously appreciated marshals in the country). I've rarely experienced lowland weather quite like that, and the stretch of the canal towpath where the puddles merged seemlessly with the canal itself was something else.

Today's a bright, sunny, blue-skied morning in London, though. The birds know that spring is about to burst upon us, and you get the feeling that as soon as the temperature rises a little it's going to arrive like a sprinter, not an old-boned, feeling-the-cold crock of a distance runner like me.