Answers to questions it had not occurred to me to ask...

The solid fat tyre I'm carrying was all the booze, I supposed. The slow times I'd been posting was just age showing, I supposed. But this morning I used my fresh new season ticket to ride the early commuter train and capitalise (geddit?) on my daily trips to one of the most beautiful cities I know.

Edinburgh is wonderful to live in, with lots of parks and cycle trails, outrageous cultural happenings and better weather than the West. (Yes, I go on about the weather a lot. It's very important to me, so I don't care if it bores you.) When I lived here I usually walked a good half hour to work then took a run around Holyrood Park. And this morning, battling up the 10 minute slog of a hill to Dunsapie Loch in the crisp wind, I realised something important.

I'm not slowing down. I'm not getting fat because I eat too much or got too old. I'm fat because my North Lanarkshire runs are NOTHING compared to what I used to do. How did I ever think that a flat 40 minutes to the train station was a good standard run when my Edinburgh option looked like this?



I have been lazy and complacent. I will never call that slope up to the North Lanarkshire pylon a hill again.