Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It is five days since my last confession.
A very bad week to relate. I even considered inventing a life-threatening condition to let me off the hook, but thought better of it — but only because I might need to use that ploy on another occasion, and I suspect it’s a joker that I can’t play too often.
The week began with a watertight excuse. Much vomiting, dizziness and associated unpleasantries came a-visiting on Sunday and Monday. By Tuesday I had perked up, and even managed a fragile four miler on Wednesday. But the appetite for running was diminishing just as my appetite for solid food was returning. The problem was that my appetite for liquid nourishment blossomed yet further in mid-week. M has flown off to Edinburgh for some flag-waving workfest, leaving me to contemplate both my navel and the Good Beer Guide. In isolation, these activities are innocent and harmless, but conducted simultaneously? Fatal.
Thursday was a night out with the chaps from work, Friday night was… Friday night, and yesterday was football and all the related wickednesses.
A day or two into this Bohemian schedule, I’d decided (perhaps “realised” is a better word) that this was going to be an R & R week. You have a choice in this situation. You can plunge yourself into the runner’s slough of despond, and flap about there indefinitely. Or you can hurriedly rearrange your training programme, and somehow pretend that this is a reasonable time for a break, and that you had been planning such a thing for a while, and next week everything will be fine again. And anyway, rest is important. This is what I did. (Aside: I just looked up “slough of despond” to check it was a reasonable metaphor, and the given definition seems perfect: a mental state characterized by a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. Even the acronym, SOD, seems appropriate.)
I agonised over all this for a while this week, until realising that agonising over it was half the problem. Best to decide to go crazy, or decide to fall back into line. Rudderless drifting seemed the worst option. Decided to go crazy for a few days. Ate some burgers and Chinese takeaways and plenty of Toblerone which, thanks to Riazor Blue on the forum, is now the RunningCommentary quick carb-injection of choice. Plenty of beer required to wash it all down.
And it becomes my thought for the week. Although I’m feeling fat and torpid and horribly unfit and totally demotivated at this moment, one of the many great things that running teaches is that it’s easy to start again.
Every training programme I’ve embarked on has been interrupted by these invisible pot holes. At first, lying there in the dark, wondering what the hell happened, it seems like you’ve come to the end of your journey. But no. Dust yourself down and get going again. A little painfully and breathlessly at first, but that melts away within a day or two and there you are: back on track again.
Taking a week out of your marathon schedule to book into an opium den is not a recommendation. But if you do it, or if you suddenly embark on an extended lost weekend, don’t panic. And certainly don’t give up on your journey. Enjoy yourself, get it out of your system, then wake up tomorrow and just get on with it again.
If nothing else, a few days of inactivity actually proves just how nourishing and inspirational running is. What seems at first like some kind of ‘holiday from punishment’, is quickly shown to be the precise opposite. What may have started life as a few days of fun, soon becomes a kind of degradation that sucks you dry of energy and self-respect. Scuttling about in the gutter with the rats and the cockroaches isn’t that interesting or pleasant after all.
Right. Good. I’ve talked myself back into it now.
