Note to self ...

No matter how cruddy life can get you will sometimes still set out after work for the 80 minute run you should have done on Sunday, except for the fact that you got home at 4am, woke at 1pm and spent the whole day sitting in front of the heater recovering.  

You will decide to ignore your Garmin when it tells you how fast you are, and you will run by feel.  It will be dark and crisp, because this is winter, but it will be unusually, perfectly still.  You will quickly realise that you feel better than you have any right to.  You will be just starting to decide that you might perhaps survive this run.

And then you will round Pt Jerningham and there, across that calm flat harbour, a new moon will be rising huge and golden over Mt Crawford.  And you will want to stop dead in your tracks to just admire the beauty, but you will keep going because it seems a shame to waste the good momentum you have built up.

You will run the whole way to Evans Bay gaping at the gorgeous moon.  You will want to comment to people walking past about the gorgeousness, but you don't want to seem crazy, so you hold your tongue.  And when you get to Evans Bay and hit the lap button you are pleasantly surprised by your lap pace.  

You will lose sight of the moon as you head over the saddle to Newtown.  You decide at the last moment to run around the Basin rather than through it, and then something will compel you to swing right up Ellis Street.  When you get to Austin you will marvel at how easy that hill now seems, remembering how much of a mission it was a couple of years ago.  You will storm along the undulating Austin, and a woman walking by will tell you you are doing a good job.  

You will turn down Majoribanks and unfortunately by the time you think to yourself that you should run up Hawker you are already past and the moment is gone.  Instead you run back towards Oriental Bay and Martin Bosley's before turning around.  As you head back around Te Papa there is the moon again, this time resting above the eastern flanks of Mt Vic.  

You will run gladly back towards the gym, respecting the strength in your legs and your continued freshness.  The little climb up Bowen to the Terrace will feel like nothing.  You will go back into the gym, stretch, and chat to the friends you bump into there.

You will catch a bus home, eat a great dinner, drink a glass of wine ...

And you will remember why it is you run.