Training for Running Girl again
Published:
GOOD Lord, you’ll never guess what I’ve gone and done: entered the Stonehaven Half Marathon. To say it wasn’t all my own fault doesn’t make me any less to blame. My big sister may have put the idea in my head to begin with, but I didn’t exactly take much persuading. She mentioned that she was considering signing up and I immediately, without thinking or even drawing breath, blurted “I’ll do it with you!”
But what possessed me? What on earth was I thinking/not thinking? I’ve been asking myself ever since – mainly while running up braes. It seems the mere mention of the Halfy (for short – oh how I long to shorten it) triggered a gut reaction in me; or maybe it was an epiphany. For one reason or another, it just seemed like the right thing to do.
On the one hand I wanted to add my support to my sister’s plight, at a time when she seemed in danger of talking herself out of it. The sis teaches body pump and body combat at Stonehaven, and some of her regulars had been daring her to enter the race. Though extremely fit, she is not a big fan of running and was unsure whether to yield to the pressure, or whether the extra training would be too much, and the race itself too gruelling. So I did the heroic thing and signed up with her.
But to be honest, it wasn’t heroics that spurred me on (as if) but a little voice in my head saying, “go on, get off your lazy backside and prove that you can do this”.
Sure, I wanted my sister to sign up, and we were training together when I was in Stoney, but mainly I wanted to do it for myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite fit and exercise three or four times a week, but for a couple of years I’ve kind of gone off the boil.
From 2001 to 2006 I was probably at my fittest. During that time I would run 35 to 40 miles a week – only once falling short due to self-inflicted illness, in the last week of December 2004.
Running was my crack cocaine, and I was horribly addicted. It took over my life, to the point where few things mattered more and almost nothing got in the way of my daily fix. I often thought of joining JA (Joggers Anonymous) but couldn’t imagine life without jogging, or that such an organisation might exist.
The addiction stamped itself indelibly into the rhythm of my day. Like a junkie I’d get “kicky feet” first thing in the morning, and would be strung out and agitated if I had to wait too long, or tried to take a “rest day”.
If I’d gone to JA, I would have had to confess to “secret” running binges. Often I’d pretend I was going home to watch TV, or even to the pub, when really I would be lapping Arthur’s Seat, or the River Kelvin in Glasgow, or Stonehaven.
Unlike proper athletes who run races and things, I was not training with a goal in sight; I just craved the endorphin rush, hankered for the “zone” – which is a kind of altered state, with highs and even the odd hallucination (or maybe that’s just me).
Regular readers will know I ran a hill race once (I do go on about it), but Highland games are in a zone of their own. Somehow the lunacy of struggling up then bounding down a ruddy great mountain appealed to me – in fact I turned quite feral, and even roly-polied part of the way down, shrieking like a banshee. But I was drunk when I signed up in the pub the night before, so it was definitely the spirits that possessed me on that occasion.
Otherwise, the idea of racing never really grabbed me. Running was my private thing, and so long as I fitted a certain amount of it into every week, my universe remained in order. In hindsight, that was a little OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorderly). To briefly explain how I developed this habit, it was in training for a play called Running Girl, which involved me running for 90 minutes, and talking more or less all the way through. After three months or so, I was super-fit, and desperate for a rest, but found that when the show came down, the urge to keep on running persisted.
Four years and many miles later I injured my leg, and despite running daily when I could barely walk or sleep without fistfuls of ibuprofen (no wonder my stomach is a mess) and lashings of Deep Heat, eventually I had to face the bitter truth: it was time to give up and get some physio or something.
Actually, the thing that fixed my gammy leg was a good long sports massage. As luck would have it my mum was training as a massage therapist at the time and sent me to one of her tutors for a good seeing to. It worked too, but after a few months the injury crept back again. Eventually, after a couple of relapses, I gave up running and took up fitness classes – which I love, but am not horribly addicted to.
Gradually I became less obsessed with exercise, and actually a bit lazy, and for a while that seemed like a welcome change. After all, there is more to life than keeping fit. But lately I’ve been under-motivated, over indulged and in need of a good kick up the backside. That’s why the Stoney Halfy suddenly seemed like a great idea. I needed the challenge, and a reason to get off the couch. And now that my mum’s trained up in sports massage, I can get the gammy leg fixed on demand.
So it’s perfect timing. Whether I get a perfect time is another matter: I’m aiming for under two hours but will be happy enough to make it round alive. For better or for worse, the training has begun to rekindle my love affair with running (I must be a masochist). And love hurts – especially those first four miles of braes: torture. Just don’t tell me to “break a leg” before the race.
To be continued . . .
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