Just recently, I’ve been working at our office near Heathrow. It’s situated in a large park, with a golf-course, a couple of lakes, and a network of sandy paths, ideal for running. Today was the inaugural jog.
I changed in the office and ventured outside at high noon. There’s something about being overweight and unfit and unwarmed-up that makes running on a chilly day seem like an unnecessary expedition into the Antarctic. Despite what the barometer said, this was a day cold enough to freeze the blood in my veins, and reduce my 2003 running targets to a cruel joke.
I so wanted to stop and turn back. I wanted to turn back before the sweat started to squeeze through my pores, and while my knees were still stiff and tingling from yesterday. If I stop now, I kept whispering to myself, I won’t even have to have a shower. I can just forget about it. No one will know. Better to have tried and failed than… can’t win ’em all… there’ll be other days… be better equipped next time… should concentrate on diet first… lose a few pounds before running… these shoes are worn out… only risking injury…
But leaping from one platitude, and from one lame excuse to another took me across the main road, along to the end of the lake and halfway up the first hill on the golf course before I knew it. The sweat was starting to both warm and freeze my brow, the way it does when you’re getting cranked up, and I knew by then it was too late. I’d have to go through with the damn thing.
It reminded me of that run I did a year ago almost to the day. December 11th, the first day of training for London. I’d felt thoroughly miserable and incongruous, and slightly embarrassed about the whole thing. As happened that day, I eventually came through feeling pleased that I’d done it, though having no illusions about the quality of the performance. Today’s run was barely even a run. More a kind of chilly shuffle around the park. But it was injecting a bit of vinegar into the soul.
I’ll be starting the marathon training again on Tuesday, to give some structure to my preparation for the half marathons I’m running next year, and particularly the 3 or 4 on successive weekends in March. Also, while I’m not doing London in 2003, I’ve offered to lend a hand to the UK Brain Tumour Society, to help them keep track of their marathon runners through their training, and on the big day itself. Doing the training myself should help me to keep in tune with them.
Sigh.
