Postponed

I had convinced myself that this was one blog post I wouldn’t need to write. Somehow, the race I’d signed up for would find a way to still take place, and everything could go ahead as planned. Sadly, I got that very wrong.

Last Friday evening, two weeks and a day before the race, we finally heard that they had had to postpone until August. It must have been an immensely difficult decision to make, at such a late stage, when the organisers had clearly been feeling confident that they could find a way to go ahead. That thought has stopped me from feeling any anger about the decision, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am, quite simply, gutted.

Six days earlier my friend and I had done our last long run: 21 miles looping up the Taff to Castell Coch and back down again. We explored new trails, stopped to wonder at the noise and number of birds in the heronry, enjoyed the peace and tranquillity of the old canal, and arrived home tired, happy, and confident that we were as ready as we could be for our first ultra. We had, we hoped, timed it well, to have three weeks of gentle tapering leaving us full of energy come race day.

That energy has gone. Vanished entirely within hours of receiving the news. Suddenly, just getting through the day is challenge enough, and the thought of adding in a run becomes overwhelming. I’ve managed two short ones, both of which felt much harder than Strava would have me believe. Today, I have just stopped entirely.

There is, if I’m forced to admit it, more to life than running. We’re approaching the half term holiday, at the end of seven long weeks where both schools have managed to avoid any isolation periods. That takes its toll too. But it was the thought of the race that was keeping me going, giving me a reason to get my shoes on and get out there, and I came back refreshed every time. Getting through this final week of term without that incentive has been harder than I had ever expected.

I have spent years telling people that I run entirely for my sanity, something that I still believe to be true. But it’s not the whole truth. In this time of such uncertainty, when life has felt so aimless, the focus of a challenge has been more valuable that I had realised. It gave me a goal as I came back from injury, something to aim for when plans in all other areas of life seemed almost impossible to contemplate. And it gave me hope. Hope that I would be able to run the distance; hope that the normality of a race would come back to us all.

That hope is not entirely gone. The race has a new date, and I have every intention of being there. It’s far enough away that I have time to stop a little, then pick myself back up and get back out, rediscover the joy and the excitement, and get training. But that is in the future. For today, I’m going to be kind to myself. The sun is shining. The garden, my book and a cup of tea are calling. Though I might just check out some races while the kettle boils. It can’t hurt to have a few ideas to mull over, now that I know quite how valuable that goal can be.