Work/Life Balance.
The week ended with a disappointing two additional rest days brought on by physical and mental exhaustion; the former caused by a combination of shift work and poor sleep; and the latter by a new era of job cuts at work with much uncertainty, other than the passing parade of friends and colleagues departing after long and distinguished careers, all apparently now of little worth to the corporation. It's all very sad and so unnecessary. For the moment my job survives, but for how long I have no idea, but no-one is safe from the long, sharp scythe of corporate death.
The good news is that last night, thanks to an accumulated sleep debt that finally had to resolve itself, I slept well. And so this morning I rescued the week's training schedule with a much needed, and long overdue Maffetone-style long, slow run. All up it was 3h20m of comfortable plodding, covering a decent 25.75 kilometres, all of them unremarkable other than the comparative ease at which they were completed.
The brilliance of a run like this is not just the growing fitness, endurance and confidence I have with my running, but the strengthening counterbalance it provides when work life becomes monstrous, unrewarding and downright difficult to stomach. Even at the best of times, we need a happy and productive life away from work, because a life dominated by your employment isn't that fulfilling, ultimately. Very few people on their deathbeds actually wish they'd spent more time at the office, let's be frank. But when work starts to creep into the foul paddock of despair and despondency, then time away from it becomes of paramount importance. Cruelly, it's often the time we least feel like overcoming our inertia, and finding the motivation to run at all is difficult, but find it, and it really makes everything so much easier to cope with, and even overcome.
A 25.75km run is not going to change the situation at work, but it clears my head of negativity, and gives me hope, for it focuses the mind on what is really important. Good health, including a bright, positively charged mind can overcome even the darkest of times.
Run on; run as long and as far as you can. It's worth every step.
March Too Much
