A week off

After last week's six miler we went out for a belated birthday lunch. Travelling in MrBeanz's Honda Civic proved to be very painful. The angle of the seat made both my piriformis and knee go into spasm. I confess I had probably not stretched properly after my run, but it has put me off travelling in the car again.
It also resulted in me having a week off running. When I went out on Tuesday for my short run my knee just didn't want to know. It has been sore on and off for most of the week. So I decided the best thing was to rest it.
I went into the garden yesterday evening to discover these beautiful flowers had come out and I hadn't noticed.

I must get out there everyday.
Yesterday I went down to London for a meeting about teaching astronomy. It was a great day. The first time I have arrived at St Pancras since the new refurbished station opened.
What a fantastic building it still is. The original building by Gilbert Scott has survived the developments to accommodate the Eurostar trains. The lower level used to be out of sight - and was used to store beer barrels brought by train from Burton on Trent which is on the line from Derby. I have also heard that there used to be stables down there. The roof was built by Butterley - a Derbyshire engineering firm who still exist in name at least.

My meeting was at the Royal Astronomical Society in Burlington House. At lunch time we were shown some of the archives of the society - which included first editions of Newton's Principia and John Flamsteed's Star Atlas - another Derbyshire connection there. It was kind of mind-blowing to see ( and be able to handle!) these old books that did so much to change the way we think about the world. Newton may have been a bit of a b*stard but he was also a great thinker.

Anyway back to running. I woke this morning, heard people running down the road, thought about getting up and decided to stay in bed, I have been up before 6 every day this week. I will try a little plod tomorrow. I did eventually get up and take RunnerBeanz to his race - where he at last broke the 40 minute barrier with a pb of 39:31. So he was pleased - and so was his proud Mum! He had run round with a V60 from the club (it was the British Masters 10k champs) RB, then pipped him to the post in the last 100 metres.