Grim days.
Before Christmas, the snow arrived like some unexpected, enchanting dinner party guest. But as she has lingered, and got ruder and more domineering, the novelty and appeal has faded. Lovely to begin with, now a damn nuisance. Go away.
Another six inches of fluffy ice has descended overnight. This would have spoilt my running plans, if I’d had any. Yesterday, after 4 sofa-bound days, I judged the pavements just about ice-free enough to get out the door again. After 1.5 miles of snow yomping along the sticky road to recovery, I came across a shovel-scraped section and decided, in the immortal words of David Coleman, to open my legs and show my class. Within a hundred metres, I find myself quickly decelerating, then slow-motion loping, then hopping, then stopping, then stooping, then calf-clutching. Another couple of frames and my extinction would have been complete, vanishing beneath the surface of the primordial soup, leaving nothing but a languid, gloopy burble as evidence my running career had ever existed. Not much of an epitaph, but not entirely inappropriate.
What am I to think? One consolation is that it is not as bad as last year. A bigger comfort is that I have no spring marathon planned. Last year’s injury was made worse by the anxiety of knowing I was booked in for Boston in April. I do have races entered this year: Almeria, Wokingham, Reading, Connemara, and I have stated time targets, but they are not as worrying as a fund-raising marathon on another continent. Maybe I can recover enough to be able to take part with enough confidence to get round in comfort. The sub-2 half remains my target for this year, even if I have to push back the date.
Last Friday’s leg massage fell victim to the snow, and has been rearranged for later this week. I’ll see what Phil has to say about it. His emailed PS didn’t fill me with too much joy: “Hope your pain threshold is at an all-time high!” On the evidence of yesterday, I’m not sure that it is.
But damn it, it has to be done, and should even help. It will also be useful to run through my options and strategy. Time to collect positive vibes, and point them at the future. I did recover enough last year to get back to trouble-free running, and I’m sure the same will happen again, given a bit of time. In the meantime, the frozen roads give me some sort of excuse not to feel too bad about being off my feet.
