Oh lordy, that was rough. I don’t remember much of it looking back, but at the time I felt every single second.
So, welcome back to my Week 7! I started it over a week ago! I haven’t run since then! My body wants me to know that! And I do! I really do!!!
*passes out*
*wakes up and screams and passes out again immediately*
*waits until he has an audience and dramatically drags himself to his feet*
So we’ve had a busy time in our house. The other week our 4 year old had chicken pox and we thought that sucked. But he bounced back pretty quickly and our baby had only had a few odd spots so we thought he’d got off lightly. Then the chicken pox hit him and they hit him hard. Now that was a long week.
Needless to say, there haven’t been many running opportunities since I did the last one. Baby isn’t even completely recovered yet but he’s over the worst of it and looks pretty happy to me. Anyway the planets aligned for me today and I was able to get away for a run.
I was very reluctant on this occasion. I knew I’d be out of practise and the last one, good as it was, was hard enough. Would I still be able to handle it after such a long break? Should I go back to an easier one and ease my way back in? Hell no, I’ve come so far, I need to keep moving forwards! But on top of this I just really didn’t feel like running today. I only did it because I knew the longer I left it, the harder it would be and there was a chance to run staring me in the face and there was no way I’d be missing that.
So out I headed in my combats, which uh... well, best case scenario is they shrunk in the wash. Today’s music was my awesome 90s Britpop playlist I put together on Saturday when I drove to Bristol. It turns out some of it works really well when you’re driving down the motorway. And luckily it’s also good for running but on a run like this it could only help me so much.
I had to extend the warm up walk a little. Well, I didn’t have to but thought it might be a good idea because I had to stop halfway through to get a stone out of my shoe and I wanted to have a solid block of walking behind me so I added a few minutes, just to get to the end of Disco 2000.
I was really not up for this and that became evident 5 minutes in when I felt ready to give up. But I did what I usually do and reasoned with myself that I could at least get to the end of the song, which was Tender by Blur, which is a really long song and took up almost a third of the whole run.
There was one great thing about today, apart from the fact that I finished it. As it was still daylight I was able to go down to the park and since the weather wasn’t great, there was no one to get in my way or trigger my social anxiety. With a judgemental swan as my only witness, i was free to puff, wheeze and snort my way around the pond in peace. The setting probably did help a lot. Although if I died out here, which felt like a real possibility the longer I ran, how long would it take someone to find me? That’s the kind of happy running thoughts I have.
I also came up with a vague idea for a sci fi about a place that lets you clone yourself do you can hunt it down for fun and it’s probably been done but I’ll look into this more because maybe there’s something I can do with it. This started with me wondering what I’d do if I looked over my shoulder and saw myself running after me. God, I was tired.
It didn’t get any easier but I just powered on determined not to fail, that was all I had keeping me going. I was out of breath, I was bright red, and my legs were getting weaker. I really really wanted a walking break but I knew I’d be disappointed if I did so I tried to focus on the music and various other ideas floating around my head and somehow crawled to the end of it without stopping.
I felt good, emotionally. Physically I’d taken a real beating and I wasn’t able to walk quite as briskly as I was meant to during the cooldown because my legs were having none of it. But I did it and again I added a few more minutes on just to make sure I cooled down properly. I passed a woman walking her dog toward the park. That’s who would’ve found my body! I thought best not to tell her that because when a sweaty stranger on an isolated paths starts saying stuff like that, people tend to call the police.
So I did it! Somehow! And my legs are still struggling to hold me up but I’m sitting down as little as possible for now, think it’s best to cool down properly otherwise I might not be able to stand up again.
So in theory the next run is in two days but that also happens to be my birthday so I’m probably just going to eat a lot of bad stuff and think about my own mortality. If this run doesn’t end up killing me then I will definitely try to do the third one this week but we’ll see.
W7r2 
W7R2
I can run again.
W7R2
I did it!!! I can’t quite believe it :)
