I’ve clearly turned into a southern urban Jessie. 12k into today’s run saw me cursing farmers, the countryside and the god damn freezing weather conditions oop north. I even ran with a hat!

The weekends long run coincided with a trip to the in-laws in Grantham where I normally opt for sedate pootle along the Grantham canal. This time I thought I’d exploit one of the myriad routing websites to download a GPX file prepared by a local runner. There were loads of Grantham routes available on mapmyrun so I picked a long scenic run around Belton Park.

I used GPSies.com to convert the GPX file to .CRS format so that I could upload it to my Forerunner to run as a course.

It started well, but then I began to feel a little cheated by the countryside. Miles of open expanse but I had to run on the roads, why don’t they do pavements in the wilds? And where were all the tracks and trails? I had to zigzag across the road, running into the oncoming traffic until I approached a blind bend where I had to sprint across to the otherside and take my chances with the tractors bringing up the rear.

We did eventually leave the road in order to skirt MoD land – yet another landowner who didn’t want us to run on their grass.

I was running solo but I say we, as the Forerunner set the original runner as my virtual partner – not a particularly fair match as he finished the 13 mile route in 2hr 5mins.

In fact the watch beeped to inform me my virtual partner had finished the full course just as I reached the end of the footpath and started cursing the farmer who had decided it would be fun to plant a ploughed field right in the middle of my route.

I was lost, in the middle of 8 ploughed fields, skirted by a river and a blasted Forerunner that chose its moment to inform me that my partner had already finished and was probably now sitting in the pub, celebrating a route well run.

I stood in a ditch and rang Lynn. I was pissed off and could only describe the crops in order to locate me. Luckily her Dad was on hand and as he’s ploughed many of the fields in these parts he knew where I was.

I backtracked in a major strop, crossed the Witham for the second time that day and before I knew it Lynn was driving alongside me with a banana and a packet of Eccles cakes.

I felt better in no time.