My Own Personal Sauna

[Razouski]

I’ve been running the last week or so with my teacher friend who has been really struggling with progressing with his running since we started in the summer holidays last year. Pressures of being a head teacher has meant he can only really run once a week apart from in school holidays. Damaged lungs from tuberculosis several years ago, and damaged legs due to rupturing both his quads completely two years ago has meant that progress has been really slow.

We’d started on 20 second runs last summer, after advice from his physio and got on a par with week 1 by the end of the summer holidays. He’s so frustrated having previously been quite sporty.

Last week after running 2.5 minute runs with only 1 minute recovery for 5km I suggested we look again at C25k as he’d been so fed up that he couldn’t run further than 2.5 mins. So this week we took our lead from Week 3, doing alternating interval runs and walks of 90 seconds and 3 minutes, but doing5 reps to cover 5km. He was convinced he wouldn’t be able to do 3minutes more than once.

This morning, we set off in the downpour to do the third of these runs. Layered up with running jacket and thin showerproof jacket I was determined not to get too cold as running so much slower than my usual pace last week left me frozen. However in spite of the rain, midway during our 3rd 3minute interval he fell about laughing when I announced that I was now running in my own personal sauna. My zip had stuck on the outer jacket and it was done right up to my chin, so there wasn’t even the option of taking it off over my head. There was no way I was going to jeopardise his running to stop and fight with the offending item. So I carried on, fortunately the rain masking the fact that I now had rivers of sweat trickling down my face. 😅 Unfortunately there was not enough to stop me seeing that, despite trying to sidestep the kamikaze worms that had been tempted out of the soil and onto the path (why..?), I had massacred a couple of them by mistake. Mea culpa.

We carried on for another two reps, as the rain gradually dried up, which is more than can be said for me.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to running distance, on my own and hopefully without the free sauna.

[Oldfloss Administrator Graduate]

You are amazing and he is so lucky to have you helping... I have this image of you red faced and red hot!!!

Very well done!!!

Hope you have cooled down now x

[Razouski in reply to Oldfloss]

Thanks OldFloss. Have just spent most of my afternoon and evening rehearsing at the Royal Festival Hall, which was very hot, so my sauna pretty much came with me. 😂😂