Running Viral Day 3: Perec, Thoreau, and Rimbaud

This is my evolving map of Wildridings and I was struck yesterday, during Day 3 of my "tentative d’epuisement d’un lieu bracknellien" that the effect of the CoronaVirus on my running is a slowing of pace (because I have nothing to train for) and that slowing is also affecting my gaze.

I am able, also because my trajectory is twisty-turny due to the 'exhaustive'/comprehensive nature of the undertaking, to take in more visual data as I run past. I feel like I'm becoming a new Thoreau of the neighbourhood, able to document minutiae of the life around me in ever increasing detail.

Part of what is happening too is I'm becoming slightly deranged, as should be quite apparent from the various outlines I'm producing through my runs. If my spatial trajectory exhibits no rhyme nor reason, my sight is going in the opposite direction, becoming refined and filtered.

I'm noticing things nearby I had never noticed before, mostly buildings. Around Easthampstead Church is a residuum of various old buildings that have somehow survived the ravages of time, which feels like an ironic turn of phrase given that three days confinement is enough to turn me into a very oddly motivated individual indeed: channelling Perec, Thoreau, and Rimbaud all in the space of one run.

There are some beautiful old houses in this neighbourhood, "Wildridings", so named (again ironically I feel) for where they used to take the Queen after she couldn't ride anymore.  I imagine, in ye olde dayes, some attendant pushing Her Royal Majesty around in a wheelbarrow for kicks. 

And as I bimble around the boundary, as I have been tending to do before heading inwards to map, I am mentally cataloguing walkways upon which I've not yet tread.  The church itself is enticing, because I know that soon I'll map its cemetary and famous headstones. 

A note on method: The map follows roads and footpaths within the urban boundary, but I'm interspersing the urban with some forest runs for contrast.  Additionally, playing fields and open spaces are being filled in, spontaneously, with zigzag or cross-hatch patterns. 

It feels, today, even quieter out there. Today's run (each day I'm writing about the previous day's run) should see me into the forest again, hopefully, but I think it will be a short one.  A lot of people are heading to the forest as a natural place to self-isolate, alone or with family members.

And a whole lot of dogs. If there were a time to plan the dog-revolution, this would be it.