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Can you still call yourself a runner when you haven’t run for nearly half a year?
Things looked a little bleak in January when my retina came loose yet again, but third eye op and third time lucky. Everything finally stayed where it was supposed to, and I adjusted to life being a little fuzzy and distorted.
The bad news? An eyeball full of oil meant a further three months with no running, no jumping, no anything that could be described as ‘high impact’.
When I first started writing this post, it was all set to be a bit of a moan that I had to take a month off running, and a look forward to being able to get back to training. Then events took a different turn.
Funny how I pay attention to my health but never really think much about my sight. It’s there, it works, until it doesn’t.
In 2016, I hit 50. In 2017, I celebrated a quarter century of being a runner.
Two pretty major milestones: running’s been a Significant Other in my life for longer than I’ve been a parent, a wife, a non-runner (almost).
Yet between those two events, the shift that’s happened in my thinking and my training’s been completely unexpected.
A small confession: I’ve had a bit of a problem with racing since I started Chi Running nearly 7 years ago. I can run as chilled as you like in training, but stick a number on my shirt with a bunch of safety pins and suddenly I’m wound up as tight as a piano wire.
Run relaxed? About as easy as running backwards.
Injury. The word that strikes cold dread into the heart of every runner. And then there’s the injury that just won’t go away. When you get stuck, and whatever you do, you can’t seem to get unstuck.
It was the most ridiculous of accidents. The weekend before Christmas, with a million things to get done by yesterday. One minute, rushing downstairs, not thinking about what I was doing.
Ever wondered what it’s like to run 50 miles? Ever wondered if you could? I’ll admit it, it’s a bit of a daydream of mine. So when Paul Waldron got in touch after the London Marathon, asking for a Chi Running refresher to help him prepare for his next challenge, the Montane Lakeland 50, I was more than a little intrigued.
This is the first in an occasional series of posts about my favourite running trails. The Staple Fitzpaine Herepath is a roughly 13 mile circular route in the Blackdown Hills just outside Taunton.
