And on the 32nd day she...

...RAN!

No, really! I know... "Loon!" I hear you cry! And I might just have to concede this time that I actually am.  However, this looney behaviour, lead to a new discovery:

PRB:  Level 2!

And this is how it happened...

Having arranged a very complicated non-specific, yet definitely running at some point meeting with Paula, I arrived home feeling distinctly dispirited; I did not want to go out running. After all, why did I have to? I'd run every day in January, that's 31 days, 151.6 miles, more than I'd ever run (all in one go) before, surely I deserved a rest? Surely? Well, no because it may be the end of Janathon, but it's only the beginning of my Magathon Marathon training and although my training plan very kindly allows me a rest day today, I know I'm going to crave it tommorrow, with a late finish from work and a long drive home. So, I texted Paula, apologising that if I waited to run with her, I'd never leave the house and promptly forced myself to lace up my trainers, don my cap and fire up the Garmin.

This is the beginning of Level 2 - in order to achieve this superior level of PRB, you have to begin with a mental mountain; it begins with the hard climb to the top. Oh, and it was a hard climb! Everything hurt: my legs, feet, hips, bum, arms, neck, shoulders, little finger (though more to do with an earlier paper cut than running!), everything! I slogged on, willing wobbly jelly legs to at least support my knackered frame, let alone push me along! At mile 2 I was still struggling and I nearly turned for home but I employed PRB: "You can do this, you are strong, you are fit, you are a runner" I told myself, and so I kept going.

At mile 3 I turned into the park, and this is where I reached the top of my mental mountain. It wasn't that my body stopped aching, or that I necessarily felt any better, but I felt different somehow... I had started to believe. As if by magic, my Ipod started to encourage me and as the Libertines told me not to look back into [Janathon] I picked up my pace with the beat of the music. By the time the Ceasars were advising me: "you can't stop now / it's already begun / you feel it  / running through your bones", I really was feeling it. My runner's high was getting greater and greater so that as I hit a steep downhill section in the park, steeped in the semi-darkness of the increasing twilight, I was well and truly throwing myself down my mental mountain. In literal terms it looked something like this:

PRB: Level 2

The uplifting sounds of 'Hey Soul Sister' by Train blasting through my earphones;
Me: "I can be myself now finally, in fact there's nothing I can't be"... aloud... pelting down the hill...
"Hey soul sister, ain't that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo, the way you move ain't fair, you know!"...
Arms stretched horizontal to my body like a small child running free... louder... faster... smiling... loving it!

When a dog walker emerged from the bushes!

He looked at me. I looked at him. The expression on his face read: 'What a complete Loon!'. And he was right; but I am a PRB Level 2 Loon... so there!

Distance: 5 miles
Weather: warmer as it had been raining earlier.
Feeling: Great because I ran!
See my run here

MagathonTraining Mileage: 164.46