Ginger Inspiration ...

After ambling along slowly by myself for the last few month's cursing my inability to progress from the run / walk method I had been following, a surprise text led me to dive back into the world of non solo running. For someone who had spent the first few months of their rediscovery of running hiding in the moon light this was a big step!

The surprise message came on a Monday morning when I was idly planning out my weeks running diary. "Fancy a run tonight, got an easy six miler mapped out?" Yes I did but was I ready, would I survive, could I get round without embarrassing myself? Two weeks before I had barely managed to complete my first 6 mile workout in over ten years, and here I was agreeing to hit the road with a crazy ginger man who loves to run daily marathons across the Sahara desert! Was I mad? Was I dreaming? What was I thinking?

The next few hours I was a in a daze! I told the wife we wouldn't be dining out tonight, I was off out with marathon mike, or Ginna as he's been more commonly known to me since he first had a hair cut like Anne Robinson. What was her response you might ask? "Oh right, are you going to come back in one piece?" That was a question I didn't know the answer to!

About ten past seven I started getting ready / nervous, (delete which ever you feel is most appropriate) before pacing the kitchen floor as if awaiting the cockerel to signal my dawn execution.

Before my insides could twist and turn themselves anymore, the door bell rang, the moment had arrived, would this be the first major step on my way to marathon greatness, or a nasty blow to my already damaged self esteem!

"So what sort of level are you at?", "Well I'm still doing a bit of run walking," i reluctantly admitted to Ginna, like a small child who'd told one of the older boys he was really good in goal, before being beaten repeatedly from every angle.

"Ok, will see how we get on." Was the ever greatly encouraging response. Then we were off, and it happened. I had a moment of realisation, an uplifting sense of well being, which wrapped it self around me and guided me upon high. I was running! Not run / walking, RUNNING! And I was running well. Everything just clicked. Here we were chatting away, my mind not wandering, over analysing, as it usually would, and I felt good.

55 minutes and 6 and half miles later I felt even better. I'd had my moment of enlightenment, Like Jules in Pulp Fiction, I'd seen what I had to do, and now I was determined to do it. (I could and would run, I would not walk the earth like Cain in Kung Fu! before any of you Tarantino fans get excited!)

So Marathon Mike, the Ginger Prince, Ginna or as others have described him, "You know mike the one with the beard who runs marathons in the desert!" Here's to you for setting me on the way, providing me with the necessary guidance to ease off and set a reasonable pace, but most of all to enjoy it!

Hopefully our monday nights will provide the backbone for my progress towards our nation's capital!

Injuries!

Injuries!  They're suppose to be a lesson; a point of reference; a painful reminder of our fallibility.  They remind us that our bodies aren't quite as strong and indestructible as we'd like to think they are.  

One minute your striding out feeling good, mind wandering to that up coming race, the chance of a PB, then twang!  As if you've just been shot, like a cyclist in the tour de france, you pull up in agony.  Your body stinging your senses with signals of distress.

The injury occurrence may be painful but is by no means the most painful aspect of being injured.  It's the slow burning recovery which is the real stinger.  If injury is like an obstacle in the road then the recovery is a series of climbs.  The hardest climb being rest.  The nemesis of many an over enthusiastic runner.  Rest is the last thing you want.  You want to be out eating up the road, clocking up the miles, pushing towards your goals.  Not splayed out on the settee resting!

But what if you don't rest enough?  You think you've done enough, you think your sorted, the pain's subsided, you'll be fine.  Your use to pushing through the pain barrier.  Ignoring nagging thoughts while out on a run.  tricking yourself in to thinking your feeling good, just one more mile, one more stretch of road.  This should be easy!  Oh how wrong can you be!  

You've ventured back on to the road.  A nice easy, sedate five miler to get back into the swing.  Nothing strenuous nothing taxing, a mere recovery run.  You start off ok, feeling good, even thinking about striding out.  Then just after a mile or so you make a turn step on the gas a little and bang!  Like a satellite guided tomahawk into the back of your leg.  You explode in a scream of pain and despair.  Why didn't you listen, why didn't you learn? Because you think you know better, you think you can kid your body, but you can't!

Listen to your body.  Listen to the pain.  Otherwise you'll be resting for a long, long time!

Craving the burn!

Last night saw the return of the burn. The rush of lactic acid filling my calves and quadriceps, the gasping for oxygen, the thrill of the run.

Running is masochistic by nature. The punishment for progression, the wreckage for the regeneration , the hunger for the burn!

It's a feeling that you dread, yet you crave its arrival. If it doesn't appear your not pushing hard enough. Easing off when you should be hammering the gas. So down the pedal goes, nearing the end, searching for the extra gear, striding out, in search of your peak. Then it engulfs you, like a tsunami battering a far away coastline. Endorphins fill your brain, the by product of your brutality.

You crave the burn. You crave it's improvement. You crave the pain that signals your progression. You crave the tightness in your legs, the heaving of your chest, and the ache from the acid. You crave it, cause without it there is nothing. No gains, no losses, a standstill.

The road's gonna make me burn, and I love it!

Why?

Lets step back about six weeks ...

My journey to realisation started with my bi-annual needlefest. A ten minute attempt to extract blood from my unobliging veins, whilst desperately clinging to the notion that I won't succumb to the Bryson anti lust for blood. The collapse which is ever so close due the feeling of blood that the overly eager for lunch nurse is rapidly trying to syphon from my tourniqeuted limb.

After a week of looking like a junkie who'd forgotten to how shoot up thanks to the bruising at the hands of the NHS, my results were back. Another year of coasting on by with out the need for application, mirroring siblings minus the need for their level of effort. Wasn't that what I'd always done?

In my mind a constant diet of alcohol, restaurant food and a seeming lack of desire for exercise had been off set by my fifteen hour days racing around busy restaurants. Oh how I was wrong!

The game was up. Not quite the death knell you might be expecting, rather a swift upper cut which had dispatched me to the canvas for a count of eight. For any normal human being a safe reading, nothing to be that concerned about. For any one whose family know all about valves, strokes, triple by passes and the anti coagulating properties of aspirin it was a sort sharp alarm clock which I'd been setting to snooze for the last few years!

So what now? A daily diet of prescription drugs from here to eternity? Or a trip to the gym and a radical overhaul of my post service lifestyle? I think you can guess which one the winner is!

Now after two months of stalled and failed attempts, the engine is finally running. 3 stripes are to be strapped on daily, diet must become a way of life, and 3.5 is the target!

Start of the road ...

So there it is, a trip to the doctors, one quick needle, that's what it took. Ten years of inactivity consigned to the waste bin. A once pristine piece of apppartus, has been left to decline and deteriorate no more!

The 3 stripes are back, the streets will be pounded and a healthier body is requested. All I need to do now is remember how to run!