December 2011

[Sweder]

Happy Christmas Eve. Big thanks to La Grand Fromage for sweating bullets over the forum, booting out the guardian gremlins to allow us all back into the playground.

A run to report at last. Good old Ladyrunner shamed me into a lap around Stanmer Park this week, a muddy slog up hill and down dale that left my heart huge in my chest and my lungs wheezing like old moth-eaten bellows. At one point I grabbed my Garmin to note sub seven minute miling. OK we were heading down a slight incline but also across the surface of a treacherous soup of wet leaves and primeval ouse. Julie looked for all the world like she was out for a Sunday stroll. Poise balance, great heel-lift and posture, easy, relaxed conversation. I floundered alongside in stark contrast, Quasimodo in the hundred metre dash, all flecked spittle and gasping, rasping breath.

It wasn't pretty but it was effective, clearing my lungs and testing my legs. In At The Deep End they call this, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger. Sure enough, five minutes after slumping against my car at the end of five limb-sapping miles I was in Julie's Funbus sipping hot chocolate and grinning likea loon. I love running. I love the way you can convince yourself you'll never get back out there only to disprove yourself time and again. EG has something to say over at the main blog about the feelings at the start and end of a run and he's right.

So, the long road to redemption via Almeria starts here. Tomorrow a festive turn at Parkrun followed by traditional Yuletide food compacting for 48 hours. Thereafter a gentle dietary adjustment and a bout of wagon-riding should result in the shifting of some seasonal lumber. I'd hoped to be in better shape by now but LIFE! as Mr Bytes, as played to perfection by the incomporable Freddie Jones, famously shouted to startle the crowd and draw in the curious, is full of surprises. It's how we rise to the challenge that sets us apart and it's a challenge I have before me if I'm to get anywhere near Jules on those Andalucian streets come the end of January.

That quote in full:
Life!... is full of surprises. Consider the fate of this creature's poor mother, struck down in the fourth month of her maternal condition by an elephant, a wild elephant. Struck down!... on an uncharted African isle. The result is plain to see... Ladies and gentlemen... The terrible... Elephant... Man

I really must lay off the brandy butter.
Happy Christmas one and all.