It’s not been a good month in the plodosphere.
Things had been going pretty well, it will be recalled. I’d
finally disembarked from my blotchy, shirtless summer and the
Svengoranertia of another World Cup failure. All on my own,
I’d somehow got down from my shingley sick bed. How heroic,
and how very pleased with myself I looked when I glanced down to see my
reflection in that highly polished — and slippery — floor.
Others probably saw it coming, but I didn’t. What a sense of
liberation when those crutches were cast off. I seem to remember
raising my arms aloft, and grinning… before falling flat on
my face.
And here I still lie, peering upwards through the mist at this circle
of faces. They look gratifyingly concerned, but slighly embarrassed,
like shoppers crowding round the old man who’s slipped on a
patch of spilt milk in Asda.
No use crying over it, but how did it happen?
Last time I tried going for a proper run, more than a month ago,
something went wrong. It didn’t work out as it was supposed
to. So be it. It happens. I went out again a couple of days later, and
this time, within half a mile, started to feel my calf ache. Back in
2003, I had a bad calf strain which kept me out for weeks, and
I’ve been wary ever since. I don’t want it to pop
again, so I played safe and returned home. Better take a few days off,
I decided.
The few days turned into a week. The week was then stretched by an
unfortunate double whammy. After 20 years without a death in the
family, two happened in 24 hours, one on M’s side, one on
mine.
It’s not an excuse, but it meant that real life had to take
over for another week or so. Two weeks without a run, my new eating
regime in splinters, and I was back where I started.
The upshot is that, before this evening, I’d not run for 5
weeks or so.
It’s back to basics. I think I’ve said that before,
but this time I mean it. I’ve rewound the clock 5 years.
I’m as lardy and as torpid as I was then, October/November
2001, when I was still struggling to run my first-ever 3 miles.
I’ve got to accept that I’m back where I started.
Just at the moment, the chances of doing the Two Oceans Ultra next year
seem about the same as the chances of getting round the London Marathon
in 2002, viewed from the previous November.
I did go out this evening for a 3 mile plod. Can I even call it a plod?
I probably ran about a mile in total. The rest was pant-walking, arms
akimbo, or on the back of my head, hoping I’d not been
spotted by anyone I know.
I’m staring failure in the face. If I’m going to
get to Cape Town in April, I have to act now. This is really it.
I’ve got 18 running days to the Brighton 10K. If I
don’t get myself to the finish line of that race
I’ve had it. Only a 10K, you might say, but you have to
understand that I’m still 30 pounds heavier than I was in
Zurich, and can’t run more than 100 metres or so without
having to stop. I’m not just back at square one; my feet are
in a block of concrete. My lack of fitness is something to be marvelled
at. Just bending down to tie my shoes this morning left me breathless.
Seriously.
Why bother? I’ve asked myself this a few times recently.
Isn’t it all rather a lot of trouble? Well, yes it is, but
these months of lethargic failure have reminded me of how much I need
this diversion. I could never have imagined saying this 5 years ago,
but life sans running seems strangely pointless.
Out this evening, puffing and floundering along the narrow moonless
lanes, I remembered that running really isn’t that much to do with the
physical exertion. Or at least not for me. It’s about shaking hands
with the world in which I live, and which I usually see only through a
car windscreen, or reproduced on TV. That sense of separation becomes
more acute at this time of year. Pitch-black evenings, temperatures
dropping… the tendency is to isolate yourself yet further behind
extra clothes and less exposure to the elements.
Most people won’t know this, but almost every book about learning a
computer programming language starts with a practical lesson that leads
to the same thing – making the words “Hello World” appear on your
screen. In such a youthful universe, it’s good to have something that
can be regarded as a tradition.
I thought of those words this evening as I pounded and panted. “Hello
World”. I was reminded not so much what running gives to the runner,
but what not running deprives him of.
It’s a thought I need to hold onto as we head towards winter.
