Date: Monday, June 8, 2020
Distance: 5 miles
Listened to: Tom Petty playlist (chilled and rocky at the same time – love him)
It’s been a while since my last post and so much has happened in the last two months. The last time I wrote, I had run 14 miles on Mother’s Day, I was aiming to run 26.2 cumulative miles every week throughout lockdown and I had a little ankle injury.
Good news first. The ankle injury moved on and I racked up six weeks in a row of 26.2 miles. Within that six-week period, I ran my furthest ever run of 16 miles I had an inkling of a plan and had planned a route the night before. With a positive attitude on board, I just went for it. Where I could have taken shortcuts and headed home early, I chose the longer route and kept going. I ran every step too, aside from brief pauses to take on water. I was elated.
Now the bad news. Just as the elation was sinking in, I toe-stubbed a rock jutting out of a wall and fell against it. I trundled onto a safer spot and realised my arm was bleeding quite badly. Some vigorous cleaning and plenty of butterfly strips later, I was relatively fixed. The family were amazing and put me back together so I could avoid the minor injuries unit. It was so frustrating. I was on a real high about my achievement, as I had recorded my a fastest half marathon in the process too, but my forearm mess made me feel silly.
I was forced to rest for a week to ensure I did not get an infection, which meant I had fresh legs for the following weekend. John suggested we got up early and do a casual walk-run in the opposite direction to my usual route. It started well until I realised the route resembled a visit to Happyland from the Mr Men books or Peppa Pig’s home town! The hills were laughingly mad but we ploughed on and realised that our halfway point actually took us to 12 miles! Oh good grief! We carried on towards home (we could not get there any other way) but at 16 miles my knee started to hurt – coincidentally we had also reached the highest point in the South Hams. The ‘hilariousness’ of the hills was beginning to wear thin and we were still far from home. The knee was utter agony every time I went down hill to the point of real-life, pathetic whimpering. Two miles and more downhills from home, I had to send John ahead for the car. I had done 21 miles and could do no more.
Whereas I should have felt chuffed with 21 miles, I did not get the satisfaction I got from my 16 miles. I had not run them all and I had felt wretched and pathetic at times over the last five miles. I was really unsatisfied and was not keen on being injured.
Meanwhile though, I received messages or saw updates on Facebook from old school and university friends who were returning to running or starting running with the Couch to 5K programme. It genuinely made me smile to see people outside and achieving their goals and some of them were kind of them to name me as one of their inspirations. I felt thoroughly humbled and delighted in equal measure. John has also casually cracked out his first marathon in 19 years, on the first time of trying, in the past few weeks and local friend Rachel continues to run a marathon a month. They are both awe-inspiring and I have nothing but admiration for them.
The arm heeled but the knee continued to niggle. I abandoned the cumulative weekly marathons and tried to take it easy and sought advice from my at-home physio expert as I had to hold the knee together for one more goal. I had been due to travel to Ottawa to take part in a four-woman marathon relay to honour my cousin’s son Tait, who I have written about before on this blog site. COVID-19 meant I was clearly still in Kingsbridge on race day, so I took to my own streets instead for my quarter-marathon. My running app says I smashed my 10km, 5km, 1 mile and 1km times, but on closer inspection I do not think my location services was working properly but I know I ran faster and I did the distance.
The injury though persisted and my next run saw me pull up short and walk the sorry last mile home. My joy of running down hill had been stopped in its tracks and that made me sad.
Running had given me patience during lockdown, so I had to find inner resilience in other ways. Not easy. The trouble is the more stressed you get with work, COVID-19, strains on the kids, the number of people cramming onto the local beaches and missing hugs with extended family and friends, the more pressure you put on the run. Believe me, not a good idea. More treatment, strength exercises and a mind shift a week later, and I headed out tonight determined to run slow and easy. I wanted to get out but accepted it would not be pain-free as yet and that gave me the freedom to run somehow.
I have more work to do and I have not lost sight of my dreams of running further, but maybe not right now. Hopefully I have got years of running left in me to achieve those goals and maybe get a proper recording of those record times!
Life is up and down for everyone right now. I have much to be grateful for and remind myself of that several times a day. Right now, I feel grateful to have a job, a lovely family, fab, supportive friends, my health, of course, and to be running when I can. I also need to keep moving to keep a check on my snacking habit! Have eaten a lot of Cadbury’s Wholenut in recent weeks to celebrate my dear old Dad’s birthday on May 20th.
Just please stay safe everyone and a special shout out to Marissa, Kirstyn, Emma, Sue, Faye, Rebekah, Mel, Hayley, Kate and Glenn who have been superstar runners during lockdown. You’re all awesome.
#slowrunningisstillrunning #runningfordad #runningfortait
Running for Dad 