Me and the Park: Both a Bit 'Blah' Today

Sunday 22nd February

Run #53

16k Reverse Tamsin Trail & Ham House Riverside

There seems to have been a bit of a pattern over the last few weeks of major disinclination towards the Sunday Long Slow Run (LSR). Particularly so after a PB parkrun the previous day. This week was a bit different however.  Where the last few I have felt so unmotivated that I almost felt angry about getting out, once I’d got going, I found my groove and rhythm and eventual enjoyment as the ks rolled by. Conversely this week I woke up feeling a bit less disinclined to getting out. But just couldn’t find myself out on the trail. It felt more of a slog and I never really found my mojo.

I’d taken my iPhone, knowing that snapping some photos on runs has kept my mind distracted and motivation up on motivation low point runs before. And I snapped away at the places where I usually find my favourite twists of the path or corners where a favourite view usually reveals itself. But I wasn’t finding ‘it’ in my photos either. Everything was just looking a bit ‘blah’.

What’s funny is that one of the things I love about Richmond Park is how the different corners have their own distinct characters; different vegetation, different features: the ‘always sort of autumn-y’ corner where at any point in the year either the bracken or the tress seem russet. The winding ‘if you go down to the woods today’ path where the trees huddle in feel a little more pine dominant. The loamy low path that’s often flooded where the earth turned black; the air always smells soil-rich. The open expanse of the yellow grit path that feels too manicured and neat to be accidental. The perimeter hedge that looks to be nothing special until almost overnight at a certain time of year it will reveal itself to be a regal riot of purple rhododendron.

But today somehow everything looked same-y in my photos. The differences, so distinct in my head, weren’t there. And this bothered me for a bit. Until I realised that’s just because I know the Park like an old friend now, or at least the perimeter paths I do even if parts of the interior still have mysteries to reveal. But that the Park was none the less lovely for not wearing it’s seasonal finest today. It is still Winter. The leaves are mostly absent, the bracken dormant and the deer hiding in the reaches furthest from the paths. And it couldn’t be blamed for a colourless weather day that would bleach the vibrancy from the best of us on camera. We all have photographic off days but the beauty is still there if you look to see it.