2 January 2014 22,605 steps 30 mins running weight 79.9 kg
Feeling over-wrought with the combination of continuing heat, humidity and an excess of seasonal indulgence, I stepped on the treadmill this morning determined to get this year’s running well and truly under way. This was to be a slow and easy, and slow it was, certainly. But easy? No, it was worryingly tough going, but it’s a start. Given the conditions, I don’t know why I expected it to be anything other than hard going, but there you are: sometimes optimism gives rise to unwarranted and unrealistic expectations.
The songs that came up on my random play mp3-thing were interesting. As I cranked up the pace from warm up to an actual run, Ph.D’s I Won’t Let You Down added a touching and not irrelevant note to the occasion, although next up was The Pixies’ excellent Where Is My Mind? which admittedly seemed probably more appropriate just at that moment.
Thinking thoughts along those lines, I was reminded of something written by that remarkable philosopher Alan Watts that I only saw for the first time recently. Speaking about breaking out of mediocrity to extend one’s self in your chosen field of endeavour, he said that we should explore our limits, not so much those of endurance, but in seeing how far down our chosen path we can go ‘without getting lost’. This resonated with me, as we older runners too often get the idea of constant improvement through greater speed and endurance confused with what all this running is truly about. For me the idea is to incorporate running into my life in such a way as to enhance both, but primarily the living part of the equation. Too many times I get engrossed in the training program and fixated on race goals or setting PBs, and end up, as Watts puts it, ‘getting lost’ in the detail and business of running, when what it’s for is the enhancing of everyday life and for extending it as long as possible. The goal, therefore, should not be about say, running a 4-hour marathon, but exploring that unknown territory where your running is not only enjoyable, but which maximises your ability to enjoy everyday life whilst not running. One of the reasons I haven’t persisted with my oft-repeated desire to run another marathon is that the sacrifice you must make in terms of the sheer amount of training and the time that takes away from family, is too huge. Which isn’t to say it won’t one day happen, but it must be part of the solution, not a detour down one of the many paths that lead to us ‘getting lost’ on the road to holistic health and well-being. Something like that, anyhow. Melancholic people like me don’t make good philosophers, I think. Except maybe for Simone Weil, and she starved herself to death at the age of 34. I can assure you that suicide by starvation is something which is very unlikely to happen to me.
With the run done, I entered the results into my brand-spanking new spreadsheet. I’ve started a whole new one, as I do every few years, but this time with a new emphasis. Given the way I’m now thinking, things need be a whole lot simpler, so rather than set race goals, PB targets and painstakingly recording every kilometre run, I have set myself the modest goals for this phase of my fitness ‘program’ of covering 10,000 steps each day through whatever means possible and of getting myself back to half-marathon readiness with no thought as to how long covering that distance may take. My only other goal is to lose 5kgs or a little more to get back to where I was when I last felt properly fit and truly healthy. Apart from the exercise, that does require cutting down a little on things like booze, and … well, the booze mainly.
Sigh.
Oh, and about my left foot and that pesky plantar fasciosis which caused me so much grief last year: before and during today’s run there was no pain at all. Afterwards I could feel it, but really it was of no concern. I truly think this may be one of the last times I even mention it.
January 2019 ... here we go again!
