the loneliness of the (short distance) runner
As I went for my weekend run today, I got to thinking about all the layers of meaning in my running.
I started running earlier this year, it being one of those "life begins at..." years. I decided I needed to get fitter, and hence signed up for a local Race For Life in May, and started training in late March.
As soon as I started to train, I realised I was even unfitter than I had thought. It is like a twisting path in that everytime you reach a point on the path, you see around the corner and realise how much further there is to go. You also realise that you started a lot further away from your target than you first realised !
So after completing the "Race" in May, I kept running. In the run-up (no pun intended) to the May event, I sometimes felt like I would go faster if I walked rather than running. I was achieving milestones, but it was hard. The May Race was 5k. By the time of the event I could run for over 20 minutes without walking - this from someone who started on minute intervals ! On Race day I ran for 38 minutes without stopping (that's the time it took to run the 5k).
After the Race, I kept up with the running, but found it hard going. In a moment of madness, one of my sisters and I agreed we would do a local 10k race in October. I looked out some training plans (Cancer Research, BUPA, Runners World). And I started running with my other half - he had not been able to run with me before as he had a nasty respiratory thing. But despite having done Darth Vader impressions for the previous 7 months, he was wiping the floor with me. I was a heaving gasping mess. We would go to run up a slope and he would make some comment supposedly to encourage me. But I was already trying the hardest I could and it would just demotivate me completely.
I started to realise that I had been expecting that because I had run 5k *once*, run 38 minutes *once*, that I would be able to repeat and improve on that on every subsequent run. Which was clearly crazy.
And the other half - well he was taller than me, ex-forces and had run the equivalent of marathons (albeit some time ago) - I just had to face up to the fact that even with 7 months off, he was NOT a realistic pacemaker or benchmark for me.
This was brought home to me when my sister came up on holiday and we went on a training run together - and were well paced and equally pink-in-the-face and out-of-breath as each other.
Now I am running solo. The other half has left. And I subsequently discovered that he was a lying cheating toerag (hence he will forthwith be referred to as LCT) and had been for most of our eleven years together :( Not only was he not a good running partner for me, it turned out he was not a good partner fullstop.
I feel adrift. My running is not about running away from something, it is about running *to* something, I just don't know quite what yet. A healthier fitter slimmer me perhaps... but it is not just about the physical.
One of the things I realised when I went through my demotivated phase was that I am very good at pacing myself. The trouble is that the flip side of the same coin is that I don't tend to push myself as far as I might. Since I ran the 10k in October (in 1 hour 13 minutes, so at a slightly faster rate than the May 5k), I have found I am running my usual routes but a minute or two faster.
Today I run one of my usual circular routes, but the hard way around where there is a decent slope on the way out. And I made the top of the slope without resembling someone who needs a cardiac team on hand. AND I got round the whole route faster than I have before. It is not a major change, but it is a change.
And in my life, I feel a bit as if the LCT had been holding me back. Or perhaps I was holding myself back to try and travel the path *with* him. He was hanging back because (as I later found out) it was not actually the path he wanted to be on. Now he has left, it is almost like I've been driving with the hand brake on, and now its off again. Its not that life is suddenly changing faster - but it's not held back the whole time. No longer that feeling of being in limbo, of waiting for something that never happens. I guess it DID happen - he left. But that is certainly not what I was waiting for !
Running may only be a small part of what I now need to do for myself, to move myself into a new reality without the LCT. But it's a start.
And you know, it's not really lonely. It is SOLITARY, and it would be nice to have someone to share the path with. But if that is not to be, I'll run it solo.
A couple of people I know who run have told me that "the first mile is the hardest". Well that is mostly what I run ;) But I hope that thought applies to life without the LCT as well - as I'm running that first mile now...
I don't know where the path will take me. As the poem I started this blog with says, I will make the path by walking. But the first mile of it is clearer - I am clear where I am starting from, I know the local area, I am not going to be out of familiar territory. But I will be getting myself fitter for the miles that come after that. Not just physically fitter, but emotionally and pyschologically fitter as well.
I started running earlier this year, it being one of those "life begins at..." years. I decided I needed to get fitter, and hence signed up for a local Race For Life in May, and started training in late March.
As soon as I started to train, I realised I was even unfitter than I had thought. It is like a twisting path in that everytime you reach a point on the path, you see around the corner and realise how much further there is to go. You also realise that you started a lot further away from your target than you first realised !
So after completing the "Race" in May, I kept running. In the run-up (no pun intended) to the May event, I sometimes felt like I would go faster if I walked rather than running. I was achieving milestones, but it was hard. The May Race was 5k. By the time of the event I could run for over 20 minutes without walking - this from someone who started on minute intervals ! On Race day I ran for 38 minutes without stopping (that's the time it took to run the 5k).
After the Race, I kept up with the running, but found it hard going. In a moment of madness, one of my sisters and I agreed we would do a local 10k race in October. I looked out some training plans (Cancer Research, BUPA, Runners World). And I started running with my other half - he had not been able to run with me before as he had a nasty respiratory thing. But despite having done Darth Vader impressions for the previous 7 months, he was wiping the floor with me. I was a heaving gasping mess. We would go to run up a slope and he would make some comment supposedly to encourage me. But I was already trying the hardest I could and it would just demotivate me completely.
I started to realise that I had been expecting that because I had run 5k *once*, run 38 minutes *once*, that I would be able to repeat and improve on that on every subsequent run. Which was clearly crazy.
And the other half - well he was taller than me, ex-forces and had run the equivalent of marathons (albeit some time ago) - I just had to face up to the fact that even with 7 months off, he was NOT a realistic pacemaker or benchmark for me.
This was brought home to me when my sister came up on holiday and we went on a training run together - and were well paced and equally pink-in-the-face and out-of-breath as each other.
Now I am running solo. The other half has left. And I subsequently discovered that he was a lying cheating toerag (hence he will forthwith be referred to as LCT) and had been for most of our eleven years together :( Not only was he not a good running partner for me, it turned out he was not a good partner fullstop.
I feel adrift. My running is not about running away from something, it is about running *to* something, I just don't know quite what yet. A healthier fitter slimmer me perhaps... but it is not just about the physical.
One of the things I realised when I went through my demotivated phase was that I am very good at pacing myself. The trouble is that the flip side of the same coin is that I don't tend to push myself as far as I might. Since I ran the 10k in October (in 1 hour 13 minutes, so at a slightly faster rate than the May 5k), I have found I am running my usual routes but a minute or two faster.
Today I run one of my usual circular routes, but the hard way around where there is a decent slope on the way out. And I made the top of the slope without resembling someone who needs a cardiac team on hand. AND I got round the whole route faster than I have before. It is not a major change, but it is a change.
And in my life, I feel a bit as if the LCT had been holding me back. Or perhaps I was holding myself back to try and travel the path *with* him. He was hanging back because (as I later found out) it was not actually the path he wanted to be on. Now he has left, it is almost like I've been driving with the hand brake on, and now its off again. Its not that life is suddenly changing faster - but it's not held back the whole time. No longer that feeling of being in limbo, of waiting for something that never happens. I guess it DID happen - he left. But that is certainly not what I was waiting for !
Running may only be a small part of what I now need to do for myself, to move myself into a new reality without the LCT. But it's a start.
And you know, it's not really lonely. It is SOLITARY, and it would be nice to have someone to share the path with. But if that is not to be, I'll run it solo.
A couple of people I know who run have told me that "the first mile is the hardest". Well that is mostly what I run ;) But I hope that thought applies to life without the LCT as well - as I'm running that first mile now...
I don't know where the path will take me. As the poem I started this blog with says, I will make the path by walking. But the first mile of it is clearer - I am clear where I am starting from, I know the local area, I am not going to be out of familiar territory. But I will be getting myself fitter for the miles that come after that. Not just physically fitter, but emotionally and pyschologically fitter as well.
posted by seahorse at 7:56 pm
1 Comments:
Kay,
That quote is lovely. I checked it out and it is Anna Pavlova. Though it made me giggle slightly as I ride horses, so the "halt" part has additional meaning !
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