SEASON of mist and mellow fruitfulness.

Autumn is well and truly with us.

Leaves fall in lovely brown and orange colours, but it's a dodgy time for road runners.

Weather is a crucial factor in jogging performance.

I have seen it all.

In the summer when I was in Chicago, I went out in the broiling heat of an American Midwest summer's day, and although the route was flat, as everything is in that city, I was sweating like a housebreaker by the fourth block from the start. Contrast that with my first training runs in Glasgow in January when I began preparing in earnest for the marathon this year.

Cold, dank streets around the South Side were my arena, and most of the longer runs were in complete depressing darkness, lit only by streetlights.

Extremes of weather are the problem for us athletes.

In that Chicago stay, the city held its half-marathon (Note to self: whenever going to another city either in Britain or abroad, check ahead to see if there are any races to do. I was kicking myself for missing out there) on the early hours of the morning so that it could finish before the sun got too powerful.

Indeed when very sadly there are fatalities in public sports events, it is pretty well always heat exhaustion that is the main ingredient or root cause of tragedy.

At the other end of the scale, to go out running in bitter cold can only be categorised as grim.

Seeing breath vaporize as you exhale while feeling a sore chill in lungs as you gulp in arctic air is not my idea of a fun outing.

Add to that the possibility of black ice underfoot on road or pavement, and the whole thing is more penance than pleasure.

Rain can go one of two ways.

A light smir is actually quite refreshing - cools the body and prevents discomfort, but a downpour means trudging along soaked to the skin in the more unglamorous Mr Wet T-shirt competition ever.

And excess water on the ground makes splashing inevitable and slipping possible. Running in waterlogged trainers is soul-destroying.

But the worst element, by a long, long way, is wind.

You may recall me bemoaning some of the marathon training runs this year when I was facing into a headwind along the several miles of the Paisley Road West.

At some points I almost stopped, and could not make progress at all.

Equally if I got a lucky break and the direction was the other way, the following breeze was a palpable support and I could feel the lightening of the effort to move forward. In watching athletics on television over the years,

I had almost scoffed when a commentator gravely reported that wind assistance for some international sprint had made the time not qualify as an official record. But as of last winter, I take it all back.

Horizontal air movement is important as a positive or negative performance factor.

So here we are in the Fall, as our Chicago friends would call it.

And as the leaves are increasingly coming off the trees and littering the pavements, falling as you slip over them is another risk.

My longer runs for this Sunday's Bank of Scotland Great Scottish Run Half Marathon have started in bright autumnal sunlight, but ended in the gloom.

I am an evening and not (other than on race day) a morning jogger.

It is either the treadmill at my sports club (in gyms there is no weather) or round the streets as soon as I can get out of the office.

A road run starts at 5.30pm and lasts for up to two hours.

So far recently it has been completely dry and the wind has been non-existent.

This good fortune can't continue, and we must be due a deluge or Hurricane Yvonne any day now. Maybe this Sunday morning will find us out. But whatever the weather on the day, we are, all 25,000 of us, looking forward to it.

As advised, my two children and son's girlfriend are all starting together. We are gathering the day before - they are all living elsewhere, so are making their way to Glasgow for Team Lafferty to assemble - and as the half marathon is not starting until after 11am, we can have a wee night out on the Saturday with the First Lady in attendance too.

However, trains and bus on the Sunday are in the late afternoon, so it is putting just a modicum of pressure on me to finish in a decent time, as I have the car and will need to ferry everyone to Lafferty Manor to get cleaned up and ready for the journey back south and north and then ferry everyone back into town to catch their conveyances.

Anyway, the game's afoot, so look out for three Batman T-shirt bedecked tall young athletes, being followed some distance behind by their Dark Knight Da.

Give us a shout as we respectively run, and amble, by.

And if it is windy, give me a push.