It has been two weeks since my last confession. Or run. (Hangs head). I can’t remember clearly all the excuses I made over the past fortnight... Atrocious weather featured fairly heavily; it’s been continual wailing winds and rain bucketing down, with roads flooding and weakened trees dropping branches everywhere. A friend lamented she felt she had forgotten what the sky looked like the other day.
I have been under the weather, too. Shivery and snotty and disgruntled. I didn’t want to expose my body to the elements in anything less than neck to toe thermals, woolly hat and down jacket.
Last Monday I was definitely going to go running. I was so up for it that I volunteered to go and collect some willow for forest school before going for my run. Unfortunately it was in the middle of nowhere, my phone GPS went haywire and when I finally did find the field, it transpired that the three large willow bundles were 8 foot long. My naive plan of dropping them off on the school pick up later that day went ‘poof’. It was instead a laborious and dirty loading of the car, a slow and dodgy drive back to the school with the boot held partially shut by woven willow branches and then a long unload. The only thing I was ready for when I finally got home, two hours later than planned, was a cup of coffee.
Today, however, body and world aligned; I didn’t volunteer to do anything, the sun sparkled and the thought of running was ok... there was a potential hiccup when I parked up on the way home from the school run to help push a neighbours’ car out of a sodden verge, then realised my own car was stuck, but a bit of rally-style reversing and I made it out.
The plan was to do a very easy 5k and just ease myself back into it. If it felt hard, then I would accept that a repeated week might be in order. I covered the Garmin (which I haven’t worn for a fortnight) with my sons skull bandana so as not to be pressured by stats, and set off.
It was beautiful. Ok, the puddles were cold, but the sky was blue and there were dozens of gorgeous leggy lambs in the fields. I had a bit of a start at one point when I thought I saw a leg sticking out of one of the ewes. I stopped to check, prepared to climb the fence and deliver a stuck lamb, but thankfully she was just a fastidious lady holding her longer-than-usual tail high whilst having a poop.
The first two kilometres were so easy! So easy that despite one half of brain telling me not to be complacent, the other half was saying, huh, let’s just crack on with the 7K. By the third kilometre things were taking a downward turn and I just had to take a breather at 4K. I decided to cover the 1K home doing some speedier intervals with rests.
I was pleased to get out again... and disappointed not to do a nonstop 5K. The Magic10 seems a long, long way away again! But hey ho. Looking at the stats, despite thinking I was running slowly and easily, I was going faster than my fastest 5K pace. Arghh! If intelligence is defined by our ability to learn from our mistakes, I’m going straight to the bottom of the class.
I really don’t find running easy, gang.
