Midweek: Shipley Art Gallery

It's getting hard to get excited about going for a midweek run at the moment. I'm almost out of new directions to take and a month of almost non-stop rain isn't helping. According to the Grauniad:

"The UK had an average of 140.1mm of rain last month, the sixth highest total for July since records began in 1836."

Awesome. And it looks set to continue for weeks yet. Meanwhile, continental Europe is on fire. Thanks, climate change. 😞

Anyway, back to today's (wet) run. I'd half intended to run due south from the office on Monday, seeking green areas in the direction of Shipley Art Gallery, Saltwell Park and Low Fell, but ended up getting back to Dunston instead. Today, I stuck to the half-plan.

But what a dreary route. 😩 It wasn't really until I got to Shipley Art Gallery itself that I started seeing any little bits of park. Mostly, it was a trek past low-rent shopping areas and traffic. One spot of note was the Gateshead Registry Office where my brother got married (and which I'd not even seen since then), but other than that, it was pretty dull.

Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead. In the rain.

I'd hoped to be able to get to Shipley and back in 25 minutes, but Google announced 15 minutes had passed before I even had it in sight. That I managed to continue and return by the time 30 minutes was up I'm taking as a small victory. It was helped a lot by the fact the return was nearly all downhill or flat.

Ultimately, the pace reported by Google Fit was 5:10/km, which I guess is ok. Today was meant to be my "fast" run, but I really didn't feel like exhausting myself. I'd rather enjoy the run and let my parkrun time just be what it is. I've hit my major goal for the year at Blyth and it might be a while before I feel like pushing that hard again.


For now then, it's another blue mark on my run calendar and another step towards regaining a consistent running schedule. I'll take that for now.

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