Every time I glanced through the window today, I felt smug about working from home. Who would want to venture out in that? The temperature bobbed around freezing all day, though the wind chill must have brought that down further. In the morning it rained heavily; in the afternoon, we had sleet and snow. By five-thirty, as I was winding down for the day, we were back to rain, while the windows rattled ever louder. Two or three decades ago I would have thrown another log on the fire. Nowadays we turn the central heating thermostat up a couple of notches. Not quite as satisfying.
It was at that precise point — at the very peak of the tempest, and the very peak of my smug cosiness — that a truly terrible thought began growing in my brain: why not go for a run?
Oh jesus, no.
Ten minutes later I opened the back door and stepped outside. Before I had time to lock the door behind me, I was back in again. For the first, and almost certainly the only time this winter, I was going to have to wear leggings. Not only that, but gloves too, were called upon to make their shocking, fluorescent-yellow seasonal debut. Yes, it really was that bad.
I’d almost forgotten that it could get like this. I seem to have insulated myself from it pretty well through the winter, mainly by experimenting with a revolutionary, minimalistic training schedule, specially formulated for the athlete with the fuller figure: the Lazy Bastard Plan.
Despite being unusually optimistic recently, I’ve done little running, concentrating my lifestyle-shaping efforts instead on eating three high-fat meals a day and getting profoundly drunk each evening. I think it’s time I faced up to the truth: that this new weight-loss regime appears to have one or two worrying flaws. But I’m uncharacteristically keen at the moment, and a spot of enthusiasm is all that’s needed to get sorted.
The angry weather may have done the cause a favour this evening. I’d planned on doing a run-walk session with some short runs and longer walks. But the sharp wind and the icy, horizontal rain didn’t lend itself to such a laid-back plan. This wasn’t ambling weather. It was still a run-walk, but I had to get a move on.
So why did I go out at all? Two reasons.
One was a post that appeared on the forum this afternoon from Ana, our newest diarist. She mentioned that her running group, in Spain, where she lives, had cancelled its run because it was raining. It reminded me yet again that running exists only at the junction of heaven and hell. If it’s anywhere else it isn’t the real thing. Trying to keep the hell out of running is like trying to ward off the wind with a stick. This isn’t heroic self-sacrifice but something much cleverer. Runners know that demons will shrivel when embraced. You may not defeat them, but you learn to manage them. You can at least defeat the fear of them. Get out there and engage with whatever it is, internal or external, physical or spiritual, real or imagined, and watch the trepidation subside.
It’s true that there’s temporary inconvenience. When I first left the house this evening and felt the raw edge on that wind, I was mad at myself for having had such a great idea. A few minutes later I stepped in a puddle, and felt my shoe fill with freezing, gritty rainwater. Shit.
But it’s easy to lose our sense of proportion. Nature is brutal and ruthless. We forget how cosseted we are. Imagine how fraught things must be for my tadpoles at the moment as they struggle for life. Not only do they have the current cold snap to deal with (and many won’t survive it), but they’ll soon have to get used to the daily visits from a pair of magpies who’ll gobble up as many as they can reach. And we think that we have it bad?
The second reason for going out tonight was that I’ve been thinking recently about how I first managed to get into running: the ten-week schedule whose goal took me eight months to reach. Learning how to run for three miles without stopping was quite a saga. I’m not back at that stage, but I have regressed badly over the past year. It’s true that I plodded round a half marathon only seven weeks ago. Maybe this should have filled my sails with gusts of self-confidence, but what it did instead was illuminate my chronic unfitness.
I’m pleased to have run 40-odd races, including five marathons, but I need to relearn some of the basics to help me reconnect with the electricity of running.
As well as retrieving all of that, I thought about the writing task, and saw that to help me describe my early experiences, it would help to relive them. It may be easy enough to re-experience the physical side because I haven’t improved radically over the past five years. It’s harder to reproduce the emotions. You can only ever lose your virginity once — thank god.
So I ran this evening because I really didn’t want to run this evening. It was that simple. Running is all about paradox. It’s a celebration of all that is illogical. It helps you come to terms with the bigger stuff that won’t make sense.
Longer term, I need a new or unfamiliar goal. Aiming for a longer distance isn’t the answer for me just at the moment. It may be in the future, if ever I get into proper shape. The solution could be an autumn marathon. I’ve done only one, and that was five years ago, in Chicago. The experience is different from a spring race. An autumn marathon means summer training. Initially, I presumed this would be easier than the cold weather variety, but it isn’t. A twenty mile training run on a hot day is nothing to feel wistful about. But of course, I’d plan it better next time, wouldn’t I?
Wouldn’t I?
Tomorrow I’ll rest, but Wednesday morning early, I’ll be out again on the mountainside in my sodden, sub-zero blanket. But please don’t feel sorry for me. I’m the lucky one.
If you’ve sorrow to spare, think of my tadpoles. What’s left of the poor blighters.
