An early start

Ok...it wasn't that early, but I did give up my lazy morning in bed (before my late night at work) to give oldest daughter a lift to school.

I'm all for a bit of multitasking, so I threw on my running shoes, hopped the dog into the boot of the car, and headed on to Cofton Park for half an hour.

Even though we live on the edge of Birmingham, we're surrounded by beautiful countryside, and the dog loves nothing more than to run and run. Unfortunately, he's useless on a lead, so the only way he does get exercised is in wide open spaces, but that suits him just fine.

Some places were quite muddy underfoot - the park still hasn't recovered from the Pope's visit in the Autumn - so I headed for the higher slopes where the ground was a bit firmer. The dog usually does all he can to scupper my runs, including jumping up at me and constantly criss-crossing in front of my legs, but today he was far more interested in a small flock of magpies that had the audacity to try to land. He managed to keep them airborne for most of the time we were there, and I couldn't quite understand why they didn't just fly off somewhere out of the range of the pesky chocolate labrador.

I would tell you how far I did, but I never did get round to recharging my Garmin, so your guess is as good as mine. I didn't exactly push myself, but it was great to be out in the early morning sunshine. Now the big question is...back to bed with my book, or do some jobs before work. Hmmm....