Sunshine and Mood

Oh what a pleasure it is to be out and feel the wind on your face and see everything illuminated by a clear bright light. After so many days of heavy grey skies and seemingly endless rain my spirits are quite lifted.

I don't know how much a feeling of well being is linked to the weather (it is certainly possible to run on miserable days and enjoy it) but I know I feel better if the sun is shining. Light has a big effect on my mood and I can feel low if there are too many overcast days. So it is important to grab those moments when it is bright and get out there.

I posted today's picture because I like views where the land opens out and you can see patches of light. At the bottom, on the path you can some standing water, of which there is plenty as it is still very wet underfoot. Further along one of the tracks usefully illustrated a geography lesson on how rivers form the landscapes. The fallen leaves initially formed a soaked mushy top layer but with the heavy rain the water flowed down the track in a stream and cut the mulch into channels. You could clearly see how, even on a fairly uniform surface water meanders. Soft geomorphology. If it had been a grey day perhaps I would have been irritated by the splashy, sloppy wetness of it all but in the sun I just saw water at play and my mind played as well, remembering my own lessons of getting water to run down a sheet of glass.

I often wonder what I think about when I am running or cycling. I am slightly jealous of those people who say they get their best ideas when running or the journalists who say they use the time to plan their next article. For me it doesn't work like that as mostly my mind is blank with interruptions of random observations. But I like the periods of nothingness - when the rhythm takes over and you get lost in the steady repetitive pattern.

There are of course all sorts of things that crop up and require immediate attention, like how to avoid the dog which seems determined to block your path or how to pick your way amongst the potholes and puddles but these come and go quickly. It is a continual process of tune-in, tune-out (or wax on, wax off). All my thoughts come and go when I am running and nothing stays in focus for very long. Even if I have something on my mind I do not think of it coherently, fragments float in and out in a distinctly non-linear fashion.

But this is why running is refreshing: the mind freewheels , loosens up and escapes its normal channels; which brings me back to the weather. When it is bright everything feels just that little bit freer