Post-Great Weekend Blues

Today was a difficult day. There are simultaneously lots of reasons why and almost no reason at all.

I spent the weekend in Plymouth with two of my best friends from university and it was so good to talk about everything in the world except running. Sometimes you need to take it down a notch. Sometimes it isn’t about answering life’s big questions. Sometimes you just need to gossip about who did what at the Christmas party and argue about who’s going to win the Apprentice and laugh until you cry about absolute nonsense. Sometimes that’s everything.

I got to my hotel last night and my ears were ringing from the endless amount of exceedingly loud conversation. Considering this was meant to have been a ‘rest’ weekend I almost definitely should have done a little less dancing and a lot more sleeping, drank a little less wine and a eaten a few more vegetables. Mentally though, I felt rested. Laughter really is the best medicine.

And I was happy. It really had been an exceptionally great weekend and on the back of that I tried so hard to enjoy today, to be positive, to make it work. It didn’t work though. It was raining and the fog had settled again and I got lost and shuffled along at snail’s pace and then I sat down and cried on a grass verge. I finished the day six miles short of where I had planned to get to. It didn’t even cheer me up when I went to a café and ordered a mint hot chocolate and the lady produced a large bar of Green and Black’s dark chocolate to make it with. I didn’t know that there were problems in the modern world that mint chocolate couldn’t fix. My legs were fine but I gave up today.

I feel quite silly writing this. I've only been away for seven weeks and ‘away’ hasn’t even involved leaving the country. I’m 200 miles from home. I could be back there in four hours if I needed to be. I’m not sure that I even am homesick exactly, but today I felt sick for something, an unshakable pang for the old and the familiar and the normal. 

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