Sunspots …

I woke up today, got out of bed, donned my running gear and went for a run.  I used to do this a lot when I was a kid, but these days it seems harder. There were a hundred excuses this morning, like every morning, as to why I shouldn’t run today, but I ignored them all.

I felt stiff and my back was sore – two of the aforementioned excuses now screaming ‘I told you so!’ as I struggled to find a rhythm – but I ran anyway. It was dark, cold and extremely muddy – November in Britain – but a mile in, around 7.15am, as I turned right to run up ‘the gallops’, the sun broke over the eastern horizon and in an instant washed away the greyness, bathing everything in a weak, but beautiful, sun streaked light. The sunrise changed everything, my mood lifted, the birds sang in appreciation and the world just felt like a much better place.

I now know why I ran today, it was precisely for that moment which I tried to capture on my phone. The image above is unfiltered and unprepped, a phone ‘photosnap’, nothing more. I’m sure a decent photographer could do much more with this image, but I love it just as it is.  I don’t understand why I seem to have 5 sunspots underneath my sun, but I like it.

My running is far from perfect, as is my photography, but both felt just perfectly imperfect today.