Yes!

Me!

Actually training!

I don't really do stuff like that me. 

What I do is more like rocking up at a nice place I know is going to make me smile, somewhere with a view, somewhere with big sky to watch the buzzards, see some trees, some water, and a few ups and downs where I can run or walk or sit a while and just enjoy being where I am.

Sometimes I get to enjoy this in the company of others with a similar appreciation of their surroundings, and this is called a fell race.

I don't know if we'll see our fell races again.

I'm sure that in the Lake District they'll be fine, but here in North Wales, those quiet little country pubs that are the focal point of our race registration and post race pint are gone.

Dead.

This is what COVID has killed.

Or rather, the reaction to it. 

Diabetic Steve, with his refusal to take personal responsibility for his health, with his 4 chocolate bars for lunch and his cider and his cans of coke and bottles of lemonade - we've protected him.

The fit and healthy people who care about the world around them, we've taken away their hobbies, their fitness, their mental well-being, while we've been protecting Steve.

The likeable pub landlords in those sociable settings out in the sticks, we've taken away their businesses, their livelihoods, while we've been protecting Steve.

I don't get it.

Steve does nothing to protect himself.

He's even boasted about skipping the border between England and Wales to get to his beloved pints of cider in a pub.

He's supposed to be shielding. He's diabetic. Lowered immune system therefore higher risk. He'll tell you that whenever it suits his own agenda to remind you.

He's even caught COVID-19!

Now it's rife in the village where he lives, because as soon as the pubs shut one side of the border and opened on the other, he, and others like him, were straight in there.

And the Government is telling me he deserves his life?

He is worth protecting?

Remember this protection of Steve is coming at the expense of others (the fell runners, the landlords, the children unable to go to school....) when he does nothing to protect himself, or others around him.

I don't get it.

If he doesn't make any efforts towards self preservation, why does it become everyone else's responsibility?

There's too many people on this planet - we all know it - the greatest threat to all of life on Earth is the sheer volume of human life on Earth.

Can we not just accept that we'd all be better off if certain ones among us, the selfish, the Steve's, were turned back into soil?

"Protect the NHS" surely should take into consideration that people like Steve are placing a constant stress upon it. 

Isn't it about time we placed the onus of responsibility of looking after our health upon us as individuals first?

Keep the NHS for sure, keep it for those who need it, but don't let it be abused by those whose attitude is like Steve's:

"The hospital can sort it out" as he dials up his insulin pen to eat another yum yum.

(I can't eat one of those things, there's too much sugar, it makes me dizzy - yet I see this diabetic man eating 2 at a time, and a doughnut!)

Anyway, that's all an aside and a road I wasn't meant to go down.

I thought about changing the names to protect the innocent - but then, I don't know the names of the landlords, or the fell runners, or the children that should be in the schools....

I'm not confused about who is innocent here, so why should I shy away from the name and shame?

I hope he reads this.

I hope others like him do.

I hope it has an impact on them.

I recognise it most likely will not.

I'm tired today.

I want to take a rest day from my training.

But tomorrow is a rest day on my plan, and next week is an "easy week", active, but not as much. I can rest then.

I'm feeling a little bit better in myself knowing that my fitness is on the rise again and one or two of those gained pounds are sliding off me once again.

It is hard to feel motivated today.

But there is light out there and that's important, especially this time of year.

The shifts that are fatiguing all of us where I work do at least carry with them the blessing that I can get out and catch a little bit of daylight where my normal work hours would take me from dark to dark at this point in the year.

Count your blessings I suppose.

As the last of the leaves depart the trees ready to be turned to soil, so too my time will come and I'll finally escape having to live among people like Steve.

I'm looking forward to it in a way.

In the meantime, I just have to try to keep myself sane and remember to appreciate what is good.

That's just a little bit more difficult for me this time of year, and especially difficult if I think too much about the year just gone.

It is though, the year has brought my Molly to me.

Not everything has been bad.

I'm missing her.

At the moment she is "locked down" that side of the border, being without her feels like I am "locked up" over here.

I am on the free side of the border - yet bizarrely I cannot buy alcohol after 10pm. I know it is being sold over there where lockdown rules are in force. Am I the only one concerned about the ways these new laws, new powers, have eroded away our freedom?

Can anybody tell me how sitting alone in my house unwinding from work with a beer poses any more risk than sitting alone in my house less able to unwind with a herbal tea?

I don't get it.

I guess I should get out and do my walk / run in a place where I can see across the border, cast my eye towards my Molly's hills and think on her a while.

She is a much more lovely thought than what has passed through my head just now.

Tomorrow I will rest, do some yoga before I leave for work.

Today, today I train.

Just got to find the right place.