Earlier today I finally did a run I’ve been planning for a couple of months. Nothing big or exciting, just a little loop that I’ve done before, but one that involves a short drive to get me out on some trails towards the coast. Slotting in my runs has been difficult recently with plans regularly having to be changed or abandoned, so mid week runs that don’t start from home have become all but impossible. But I keep planning them, just in case, and today the planets aligned and I found myself with a good, solid chunk of the day without anyone needing me. I’m sure the house would have appreciated a clean, but that was never going to happen when a long-awaited run was in reach at last.
I’d intended to do this route as part of my training for a trail half marathon, but that race has come and gone without my taking part. I’ve never failed to start before. With the tiny amount of races that I sign up for, I have always felt like I couldn’t justify not starting (illness and injury aside, of course). And when I signed up to this one back in January it felt entirely achievable. After all, if I could finish an ultra seven months after radiotherapy, surely I could run a half with four months of training and nothing major beforehand? The answer to that question is almost certainly ‘yes’. But only if the training actually happens. Which, of course, it didn’t.
There was no one reason why not, life just gets complicated sometimes – plans get turned on their heads, training sessions missed or reduced to something smaller, and the race that should have been an exciting goal became an increasingly overwhelming demand. On paper, it looked as if I should be able to do it. I’d done a few runs at the 9-10 mile mark, a fair bit of hill work, and knew from past experience that the adrenaline of race day would almost certainly carry me through those final miles. But each of those runs was taking far more out of me than it should have done, which was a clear sign that I wasn’t actually ready for it. I could keep going, keep pushing myself to get the distance, but I wasn’t really training, I was just being stubborn, and my body was shouting at me to stop. The decision not to start was not, in the end, about worrying that I wouldn’t finish; it was about knowing the impact it was going to have on me, and choosing not to put myself through that.
Any concerns I might have had about making that decision were swept away by an overwhelming sense of relief, surely the clearest possible sign that I had made the right call. And that relief has only grown as I have rediscovered my sense of joy when running. At a point in time where I needed running more than ever to help deal with the rest of life, I was at risk of losing it through pushing too hard. Training for a hilly trail half should have been joyful, the perfect excuse to focus on my favourite sort of running. The fact that those runs were so often making me tired and irritable was the clearest indication possible that something wasn’t right. Those months of trying and failing to train had eroded my joy in running so much that I was close to wondering what I would do if I lost it completely; it turns out it was never the running that was the problem, it was the unnecessary demands I had added to it.
My goal for this morning’s run was a simple one – make it out to the coast and finish the loop. As I left the car park and zipped up my waterproof against the wind I wasn’t sure quite what the day was going to bring. May seemed to have morphed back into April, with a strong wind whipping sheets of damp drizzle around me. After a couple of miles through the woods I headed out towards Lavernock Point, following the coastal path down through the fields to pop out by an old WWII look out point. I always stop here, inevitably adding to my collection of photos from the same spot. The view feels fresh every time I see it, the islands in the channel still visible today through the thick, damp air. I can feel myself take a breath and unwind a little as I watch the light on the water for a moment, and then it’s back to the path towards Penarth. It was at this point today that I realised I was thinking about writing again. The run had done exactly what I needed, it had calmed me, and given my brain the space in which to start thinking again.
I am no longer concerned about losing my love of running. This period has brought home to me both how beneficial it is, and also how important it is to make sure our goals are the right ones. Those goals will inevitably change, both slowly over time, and sometimes day by day or even hour by hour. There are times when the external goal of a race is the perfect focal point, a reason to keep training. But there are also times where the goal is internal, to simply keep going, day by day, without falling apart. And there will be times where achieving the latter requires giving up the external goals as one thing too many in a life that has quite enough demands already. I am going to see that as a success in and of itself.
I Run Free 