Rehab run this evening features one of those wonderful liberating moments you run for, you live for. I was running 30/90s in a swirling gusty wind that was whipping up fierce looking grey clouds over the golden ridge. I was looking at the light, the shifting stormscape, for a moment alone on the trail. Just as o started a run interval I detected a streak of movement to my left. Two deer sprinting across the upper meadow. I ran with them watching three as they plunged into the dividing hedgerow, and then, as I ran on out the other side. As they ran across the second meadow in a scything arc down towards the path they startled the calves grazing there who began also began charging down from the ridge. There were were all running in the wind together across golden fields under a glowering sky.

I stopped near a tree and watched as the first deer shot across the path in front of me and into the woodland of the nature reserve. I waited, expecting the other to follow but he turned and strolled away, turning back to check the rival had gone. Startled by a cyclist he trotted up away over the ridge. Noise and people returned. The fields lay still again, the cows chewing placidly. The race was done, the moment gone, the spell broken.