I've got a big ol' bush.
Just getting that out there feels like therapy, like I've nervously stood up in the chaired circle.
Actually, I'm feeling particularly drivelous, so let's do it...
***
The man stumbled forward and took his place in the circle. It was almost a fortress, palisaded with seats and braced by those ready to confess, ready to claim redemption for their shoddy ways. He was glad to be among them; coming this far was hard enough, but the underlying pangs of pity and guilt lay heavy. All eyes seemed to be anchored to the ground, but he couldn't prevent his own from shuffling and dodging, avoiding contact with all others.
He knew why he came and what he had to do, but all of a sudden the half-bottle-of-whiskey borne courage waned. This seemed the only place for redemption and he knew he had to go through with it. He owed it to himself, and his family. Particularly the children. He stood with a stagger, gazed down and drew a sharp, cold breath.
Time to testify.
"My name's...my name's..." Every fibre of his being implored him to turn and walk away, but a defiant spark kept him there, rooted to the spot. He filled his lungs once more, and gripped hold of that one nerve that stood with him. This moment had been too long coming.
"My name's Paul, and I've got a massive bush."
The circle stared at him in silence, not quite as welcoming as he had anticipated. For what he knew of the workings of these support groups, someone owed him a cuddle round about now. Surely they were obliged to at least clap.
"I said m-name's Paul" His voice cracked with irritation and revealed his intoxication, "An' I-got a mnassive bushh".
The circle stared on; their eyes burning his face like magnifying glasses in the sun. He felt naked to the soul.
There was a shuffling in the group. An old lady who was sat with a closed book perched neatly on her lap leant forward and eyed the circle. She stood up as sheepishly as Paul had done a moment ago.
"Paul. Well, well done for admitting you have a problem. They say that it's the first step to recovery."
"I know, s'why I'm here." A single tear escaped and painted a waving line down his cheek. "I need to get a handle on it. I've dragged my family through the mire long enough."
The single tear became an exodus, and a deluge erupted.
"She said she's gonna leave me."
"Yes, and we're all proud of you for taking this step, Paul. But I'm sorry to say though that you may've taken a wrong turning." She waved a hand around the circle, "This is the Women's Institute Book Club...in my own home. You live next door, Paul."
***
I know, I know. All that, for that. I've got time on my hands and you need to keep up!
The massive bush is in my front garden, and a bushier bush hasn't been seen since a 1960's specialist interest film I once saw as a kid. If you can't visualize what I'm talking about, fret not, there are plenty of documentaries flying around the internet. Just make sure the kids are suitably distracted.
It's been utterly unkempt by previous owners for presumably an epoch and has been on my to-do list for the last year, but constantly bumped down behind activities of much higher criticality, like my ship-in-a-bottle project, that is now at the crucial 'gluing the glass shards back together' stage, and spending my time wasting your time by rambling on about irrelevant nonsense on this thing (and this shall remain until Twitter open themselves up to a 500,000 character limit, I have petitioned). But it got to a point that only about four inches of pavement protrudes from its magnitude. Luckily I live in a sleepy little cul-de-sac, otherwise I would've been Facebook shamed a long time ago - there would've been a picture of a sad kid in a curb-parked wheelchair unable to pass, captioned 'Bastard homeowner hates disabled kids' so I bought a set of hedge trimmers and went to town.
To 'town' was actually more like to 'village'. To a tiny little one-house village. The bush wasn't having any of it. The branches have all been vying to outdo each other and have crept out further and further for a glimpse of that lesser-spotted English sun. They are all over half a metre long and spindlier than a crane fly's legs, and just deflected away from any pressure applied by the hedge trimmer; they just drooped and evaded the blades, only to whip back up and wet-slap me on the chin. Twice was enough for my giving-up-smoking temperament, so the hedge trimmer was launched over my shoulder, the shirt was ripped off like a Poundstrecher strippergram, the war paint was slapped on, and I dove in headlong, armed with a pair of secateurs in one hand and bolt crops in the other.
It took me four hours to get the thing back to within our property line and the soft green leaves were replaced by branches like medieval defences; rows and rows of impalingly-sharp spears and its pointy skeleton now doubles up as a perfect child-catcher. I started having visions of the neighbours' kids zipping down the reclaimed land on their bikes and ending up spiked like Vlad's critics. The idiot king in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was wasting a salary on that big nosed fella, who unnervingly resembles an ice cream man that used to serve my patch as a kid. He used to cart us away and lock us in a dungeon too. And was forever running out of flakes.
What he should've done (the king) was planted a load of hedges, sack the hell out of the gardener for about a hundred years, go and buy all the local kids some nice new bikes, and then booyah! A whole village worth of spawn stuck like flies. Upside down, right-way-up, back-to-front, or just a couple of size two's poking out.
For a moment, I was quite satisfied in its dual functioning potential, but then sense caught up with me and I thought of the lawsuit. The solution? Park my wife's car in front of it to block it off. In short, we've now gone from worrying about only having four inches of pavement, to having no pavement at all and only about four inches of road.
That's a proper Paul job right there.
The point to all this? Er, not a lot to be honest, other than being practically disabled the next day.
I had legs. I could see legs, and if I hit them hard enough, I could feel legs, but I must've somehow disturbed the wiring because I kept sending out direct instructions, like "move" or "bend" and they just stared back at me, cocked headed like a stupid dog.
And my knee (who if was actually person rather than a leg joint, and if Jeremy Kyle hadn't been ruthlessly snatched from our lives, would've been a regular on it) was grumbling away about his misfortunes at being sewn to a giant, weighty, vaguely human-shaped pink croissant (me), and getting himself all bloated up like an irked puffer fish. Same old story.
We went shopping in the morning to kit the kids and the mother-in-law out with new shoes and winter coats, and my darling princess did her usual 'I'm cold' routine, which goes from wanting a cuddle to me being somehow magicked into her personal sedan. A good couple of hours of kid-carrying, followed by several laborious hours of stooping, stretching and violent bush-kicking is too much for the ol' fella (the knee) and he let me know about it in a series of strongly worded letters addressed to my brain.
So rest up, I hear you shout. Rest, elevation, ice, gentle movements, I hear you implore.
Pffffft, no.
The Goose fat was applied, followed by the typical man-lycra wrestling (Garmin counted that exertion as exercise), then flare launching and the wife coming to rescue me out of half-up and twisted trousers, followed by trousering back down for a wee, trousering back up (with the aid of wife and mother-in-law), a little lie-down, some doorframe-collapsing dynamic warm-ups that mainly consist of leg wiggling, dry humping the air and generally disgusting anyone in the same room, then dad-dancing playlist activation, and then out the door slapping myself across the cheeks saying, "You are a snail! You move like a glacier! You keep your heartrate in the cadaver zone! Be more like Jell6!"
And you know what? I did! To be honest, I didn't have much choice.
I've done 38 runs now on this program and this was by far my slowest one. Slap my arse, coach! I've had a serious issue with running too fast in previous get-running incarnations, that have led to injury...hang on...
***
The man stumbled forward and took his place in the circle. It was almost a fortress, palisaded with seats and braced by those ready to confess, ready to claim redemption for their shoddy ways.
***
OK, no. I can sense your tuts and sighs.
The biggest change was my walking speed. I previously seemed to have misconstrued "brisk pace" to mean power-walking. It has come in handy at times though, I've cut my own running track by bulldozing through dense forestry and garden fences in my tank-like gait, but this time I managed to slow it down to more of an amble. Not a nature walk kind of amble, more the sort that's adopted when dodging those leeching bastard do-gooders who terrorize the high street by catching your gaze and coercing you into signing up to a direct debit donation scheme to save single celled organisms. Thank gawd for coronavirus to see that lot off. The new walking pace is 'a need to move quickly without appearing to move quickly' kind of amble.
As further evidence of my general backwardsness, I tend to feel the walks more than the runs, particularly in my mid-calves. I know I'm starting to repeat myself more and more from previous blogs, but my feet are absurdly long and flat, like I've been steam rolled up to the ankles. I buy my shoes at a novelty shop, all red and shiny and hilarious. Being style conscious as I am, I end up buying the rest of the clown costume for consistency. I'm a natural snow-walker. I'm a horse-drawn plough, and this seems to put an added strain on my calves that, for some reason, rears its ugly head when I walk at a purposeful pace.
So, Improvement #1: cut that out. Check.
Improvement #2: try to run at about 6:30/km.
My typical pace is 5:30/km (for about 3.5km and then drops to *enter infinity symbol here*/km while I'm regressing for the next 6 months on the sofa). I'm using my snazzy new Garmin to control pace, and it's difficult when only running for 90 seconds at a time, as it seems to take about 15 seconds to average itself out. Plus, the prolonged watch-staring tends to lead to lamppost tipping and apology letters to parked-car owners, but I think I even got down to 7:00/km at one point.
Slap the other cheek, baby.
I'm still not comfortable going slow though; I'm as coordinated as an epileptic dance troupe. All my limbs still flap at the same rate, and the lack of forward motion is just converted into a clumsy, staccato pogo-bounce, like a child walking a string puppet, or Long John Silver chasing a marble.
To try and stay loose, I start flapping my hands camply at the wrist, like a fledging taking its first do-or-die steps over the precipice of the nest. I don't know if it was that or the clown costume, but I seemed to receive more stares than usual this time.
I've had my Garmin now for three runs and I've managed to run progressively slower on each outing, but my effort apparently has increased in turn. As pace goes down, cadence and heartrate go up:
With Garmin:
Run 1 (W1R2) - Average pace 7:15/km, Max 4:10/km. Average cadence, 135spm, Max 156spm. Average heartrate 119bpm, Max 156bpm
Run 2 (W1R3) - Average pace 7:40/km, Max 4:45/km. Average cadence, 134spm, Max 168spm. Average heartrate 154bpm, Max 178bpm
Run 2 (W2R1) - Average pace 8:08/km, Max 5:02/km. Average cadence, 132spm, Max 167spm. Average heartrate 142bpm, Max 172bpm
But at the same time I feel utterly short changed when I've barely broken a sweat. I love a good runners high; I seem to be addicted to oxygen starvation, like some kind of gimp-suit fetishist, and am soothed by the calledescopic patterns that bespeckle my vision when I'm laid out at the precise point where MJ told me I'm done for the day. On one occasion, this was in the middle of the road. The car horns were like an orchestral soundtrack to my visual Fantasia. But on this last run, I just strolled through the door, whistling and without even a sprinkle of sweat. I didn't even need my weekly bath.
But! I'm in this for the long haul so I've agreed with myself that I will keep this up, no matter if duller than a pair of Nun's knickers, and abide the disappointment until increased distances (accompanied by sustainability) bring back those wonderful near-death highs. I shall just have to make do with meth until then.
Happy running you bunch of miscreates. If you've managed to read this all the way to the end, well done! Help yourself to a "I survived another Paul-post" sticker, and you can apply for that hour of your life back via the following link:
givemeba...*character limit exceeded*
post-script edit. The installment has somehow inherited tags for "laparoscopy" and "epoch chemotherapy". Please don't come here for health advice. Don't even come here for sense.
Well slap me sideways & call me Judy!
Slow coach and being old
New here. Need a big helpful slap
Coach to 5k to Marathon?
Can someone check my maths, please?
