Twisted and Tangled

Thanks for all the good wishes from yesterday. Despite the rather gross deformity I was pretty sure it wasn't serious. I woke up this morning with a lot of soreness in the legs but with them at least looking more or less the normal shape. I had no problem getting up on the moor first thing, walking up through thick mist to emerge into warm sunshine on the very top. There were lots of walkers and runners around, all enjoying the reward of our effort to climb up above the fog, sharing a sense of superiority over those folk in the town who possibly had no idea that the sun was blazing down just a few hundred feet above them!

I've had news of the properly injured runners from the race. Two guys were air-lifted off the fells by helicopter, one with a dislocated knee and the other with a broken wrist - fractured in four places. Both have vowed to return to run next year. I think I'm going to have to return too, and perhaps run without the camera so I can focus on the race. I think I'm a bit of a liability running around, trying to keep my feet while also looking for photographic compositions. Fell running, like any sport, requires focus and concentration and, again, like any sport, is a mind game as much as a physical one. It's about finding the will to push yourself to the limits when the body is seeking to protect itself. That self-preservation mode kicks in for me now far earlier than it used to - especially when I have the "get out" of stopping to take pictures! I feel like I have something to prove to myself. I guess that's just part of my psychological make-up.

Another hard blip choice to make but this somehow seems to fit the mood better than any other. I have felt a bit twisted and tangled today.

Finally, thanks so much for your appreciation of yesterday's shot of the fells. The treatment lent it a slightly exaggerated drama - but I wanted to get across that feeling when the cloud suddenly clears to reveal such a view. It was intensely dramatic.