We're going on a bear hunt...

Today I woke up and thought: 'Let's go and hunt some bears'. This required the help of my faithful friend, and running partner Paula. So at around 12.15pm, fuelled with porridge and blueberries, we headed out the door taking the camera with us.

Our intention was to run the 10 miles on my Magathon training plan. Usually we'd have had a plan of where we were running to but we set off with no idea of where our run would take us; it may have been something to do with the new year or maybe something in the frosty January air, but our run today was going to be one of spontaneity and surprise.

First up on our jaunt through the unknown was the blue painted road; who knew where this strange and mysterious path would take us...

Well actually, it took us about 1/4 mile through the park and out the other side. On the way we did see Dorothy (on a little pink push bike), Totoe (who looked a little like a bull-terrier) and the tin man (who I think was maybe just a guy dressed from head to toe in a grey tracksuit), but that's what you get on spontaneous runs along strange and mysterious blue painted lines.

From this point, we decided to run through every park we came across. This was very exciting and we ran through two more parks; we did see some more, but by this point, we'd done 5 miles and were needing to head in the opposite direction. But hey! Spontaneity was on our side; no rules! So we scrapped the 'park run' idea and headed off into another world of the unknown.

Passing what used to be called 'Strangeways', but I think is now known by the much more mundane title of 'Manchester Prison', we questioned how easy / hard it would be to break in / out and noticed some liquidised beds for sale at the end of the road. I did take a picture of the liquidised beds... well, the sign, rather than the beds themselves, but it seems my camera has hidden them from me... or liquidised them!
I know... disappointing!

As we were now over half way, the rest of the run lost something of its earlier spontaneity, suspense (there had been suspense!) and mystery, as we were just heading back home... so I shan't bore you with the details (although today I only burped twice!). Needless to say we completed the 10 miles (plus an extra 0.3 for good measure) and came up with a plan for the day which involved shopping for bikes, watching another friend's wedding video and going to the cinema (hence this post being written very close to the stroke of midnight).

So, day 2 of Janathon is complete and despite the initial intention of heading out to hunt for bears, we failed to find any; I have since googled bears, and discovered that the reason for this is that they don't tend to inhabit this neck of the 'woods'. So tomorrow, I will hunt for squirrels instead.

Distance: 10.35 miles
Weather: about 4 degrees and quite pleasant for running
Feeling: spontaneous!
See my run here.