blog: The days are now long enough to run after work

src/content/blog/2026-03-04-longer-days.md

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+---
+title: The days are now long enough to run after work
+date: 2026-03-04T20:14:49.777Z
+slug: 2026-03-04-longer-days
+author: Thomas Wilson-Cook
+tags:
+  - journal 
+  - personal
+
+---
+The experience of going for a summer run through my local riverside woodland trail after a day's work brings me *such* joy.  To be mentally tired, then made physically tired while getting progressively more scratched and whipped as nature encroaches further past the path boundary as the seasons advance.  The feeling of arriving home in this condition, clothes covered in seeds and spurs, knowing I'm about to shower and then eat a good meal while sitting down... It's like when you take your seat at the cinema or theatre.  The anticipation of something good.
+
+Between the first really rainy week in October and about now this simply isn't possible, assuming I cannot end my work day at 2pm... actually maybe I'm on to something there.  I guess even if I took the half day (who needs the second half of their pay cheque?), I'd still be faced with the flooding that reliably loiters anywhere remotely near a river in  Oxfordshire every winter.  I can only assume somebody wrings out the great sponge of our clay soil.
+
+What I especially love, and this is another three months away, is running through the heat that's been baked into the earth all day.  An evening run where there's a feeling that nature is glad it can take a break from all that damned growing and thriving, and all the plants and hedgerow animals can start relaxing again[^2].  
+
+I don't think I used to love this.  Partly because I lived in London[^1] where I didn't have enough sun-baked nature to run through, and partly because I used to be pretty indifferent about the running part of running.  The bit where you finished and looked at your active minutes for the day or your split paces, I've always loved that (still do).  But the bit where you *do the thing*... not so much.
+
+The prospect of longer days seems impossible then inevitable, within a span of a week some time in mid-February. 
+
+I think it's okay to be a fair-weather anything.  Good weather can actually make things more enjoyable[^3] and just because something's unenjoyable doesn't mean we *should* do it.  Work, municipal administration forms, and badly cooked vegetables all make us think that.  But it's not true, at least I don't think so.  Pan friend tenderstem broccoli, soy sauce, and garlic is great for you (probably), and is *all* vegetable.
+
+I'm not a fair-weather runner, I need it in my life too much - but I'm certainly glad to my bones that we're due some fair weather.
+
+---
+
+[^1]: Specifically a part of London not quite remote or expensive enough to have this much nature
+
+[^2]: Not the birds though, for them it's the evening chorus/battle cry
+
+[^3]: Have you ever eaten outside in the mizzle?  It's okay if you're on a mountainside but it's nothing on a risotto al fresco at 14:00 at 24 degrees heat