For all my moaning about the darkness, I did manage to go for a run this evening. Not that I needed to, the traffic in strike-chaos-ridden Paris was enough to get any cyclist’s heart racing.

The person that I was a week ago, while fully pumped up with motivational mojo, retained a sufficiently clear head to know that the person I would be today would have the spine of a jellyfish. This unfortunate but inevitable metamorphosis would result in my inability to train due to seemingly valid but fundamentally weak reasons such as, “it’s dark”, “I’m tired” and “I’d rather have tiramisu”. This person (the me from a week ago) therefore arranged with a friend – we’ll call her L – to go for a run today. Or should I say tonight.

If there’s one thing I have in common with that manipulative bastard (the me from a week ago), it’s that I really hate letting people down, so if I said I was going to go running with her, then I’m going. Even if it’s cold enough to freeze vodka out there.

So today I went around the Jardin du Luxembourg 3 times. Since it’s closed at night, we ran around the periphery, which means you’re dodging doddery granddads and pedestrians and other nuisance factors that make you wish you had a gun, or maybe a klaxon.

Anyway, the route when you’re not allowed inside the Jardin looks like this, and is 36 metres shy of two kilometres, but the extra 36 metres are made up by the weaving and dodging you do to avoid all the pedestrians. We ran three laps in about 36 minutes which comes to a conveniently precise 10 km per hour. My average HR was 156, which is on the high side. My calories burnt were… Actually I’ve decided not to focus too much on that, I’m not doing this to lose weight.

I found the run hard. This is because my right calf and my lower back both decided to hurt. This in turn is because I am as supple as one of the girders in the Eiffel Tower. Remedial action may be required, but my local yoga class isn’t populated by the most attractive people in the world, and there are some versions of Adho Mukha Svanasana I don’t need to see. I’ll start with some simple stretching before and after my workouts (more than the minimum I currently do) and see if things improve.