Not waving but not quite drowning

It was bound to happen. I’ve spent the last 3 days wandering around in a little bubble of self pride. My runs were getting more fun, easier, faster… my weight was going down (half a stone now!) and I was in full self-congratulation mode…

…then I went for a run at lunch time.

It’s so hot out there! I mean, I realise technically it’s only about 12 degrees but I have only ever run when it’s really cold. Today felt like running on the surface of the sun. It pushed my heart rate up, made the hills seem hillier and my curses got filthier (I find swearing as I run helps).

Hateful, hellish, horrible hills. I hate them I hate them I hate them and I hate them even more when it’s not freezing to compensate for my fat.

Hmm. Easter can only be said to have put a crimp in my training schedule. Basically I gave serious consideration to going for a run during the long weekend… I even went so far as to put on my extremely attractive running outfit (corsetty bra, corsetty pants, lycra leggings and hide-it-all baggy shirt) before deciding to have a nice sit down and an easter egg instead.

Well, I did technically darken the door of my gym on Saturday night but I’m not sure I bothered the machines unduly. I never quite found my stride and ended up huffing home after doing only 20 minutes on the treadmill rather than the planned 60. I’ve decided not to count it, anyway.

So.

Today I ran out of excuses not to run with Evil Bob. I’d remembered my PE kit so wouldn’t be forced to run in my vest and pants, I’d got my trainers (rather than my high heels that I accidentally packed in my kit bag a week or so ago) and nothing was putting Evil B off of his demented plans to make me run up hills again.

As is the funny way of things sometimes, though I was desperately trying to think of reasons not to go on the run, once I got going it was one of the best ones I’ve had for a couple of weeks. Almost not horrific. I smiled a bit and everything (Don’t tell anyone). My elation at finding the hill run slightly easier than I did a week ago even carried me through the disgusting discovery at the end that I’d forgotten to bring the means to have a shower.

Can I coyly confess that, even after the excesses of Easter, I’ve lost over 5 pounds since I started running. Oddly enough, for ages I didn’t loose anything even though I could have sworn my clothes were a bit looser then, all of a sudden, I lost 6 pounds. I got one of those back over easter but still... Pounds are pounds aren’t they? Apparently I didn’t loose any to start with because my muscles were increasing at the same rate that the fat was going… or something. Anyway, it would seem I’m heading in the right direction. Run away from the lard, Sam. Away from the lard...

So I’ve basically cracked wobbling along slowly for 4 miles. I am confident I can do that with only a couple of walking breaks and at the end of it I’ll be able to have a reasonably normal day.

With that in mind, Evil Bob announced we would be doing some ‘hill work’ today.

I’m not, as I think I’ve mentioned here before, terribly keen on hills. In fact, it would be fair to say I regard them as a sort of natural enemy to my *mumble mumble* stone frame.

In short, the words ‘Me’, Hills’ and ‘Running’ are not a threesome I would naturally want any part of.

Lovely Tori cried off today’s run, pleading that she had already done some ludicrous dawn dash round her local bike track this morning (hmm) so Evil Bob was free to victimise me with no witnesses.

We opened our jaunt with a 6 minute uphill section. I’m sure you are thinking ‘6 minutes? That’s not long…’ but let me assure you, it’s a very long time to be running gently uphill. Then we turned left onto the “proper” hill

‘Come on’, he jollied me, while my legs screamed in horror at the camber, ‘just get to the top and we’ll rest’.

‘I caaaaaaaan’t’ I wailed, like a toddler.

It was not my most dignified hour.

In childish retaliation for Evil Bob’s announcement that we would be doing hill work, I’d taken my iPod along for the run. In true English fashion though, I couldn’t quite bring myself to be that rude at the start of the run so I’d settled for putting only one earphone in. After the first ‘proper’ hill I defiantly stuffed the other earphone in too and turned it up until I couldn’t hear Evil Bob being all motivating.

I pondered what could motivate me to run a bit harder and further and so on. I concluded that someone waving a pair of nice shoes at me from the finish line might do it. Then I realised that wouldn’t work because I’d be too many miles away from them at the start to see the shoes. It is a mark of the oxygen deprivation that must have been in play by that point that I decided that I needed the shoes attached to one of those donkey/carrot stick arrangements. You know like in cartoons when they strap the stick with the carrot on to the back of the donkey’s head?

Eee-haw

So for the first time I put a race number on and joined in with others doing an official run thing.

OK, it was the sport relief mile.

Which I’d sort of assumed I would find to be a piece of piss. One mile. I run 4 with not too much bother now (chortle, lie) so it seemed like one would pose little problem.

Cor, it weren’t half hard though! The park, which hosted my local mile race, is on a hill you see. There were lots of hills in the race and I’m not very good at hills – what with being very fat and everything.

Anyway, I did it. 13 minutes – which might sound slow but actually represents me knocking 2 minutes off my normal time, and I was holding Odd Middle Child’s hand for most of it. Actually as the finish line came into sight she suddenly broke away and legged it and I struggled to keep up with the little swine.

So, what was it like? Well, I remember cursing it as I ran – but now I feel unreasonably proud of myself. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have done it at all 4 weeks ago. There was no one else my size running it so I guess I was doing OK. I liked the big fun warm up that everyone did before the race, I liked wearing the race number and feeling all part of it. I liked that we didn’t come last. I liked that Mr K (who regrettably, running with Little Madam Kinsella, came in slightly ahead of me and Odd Middle Child) was completely shagged out for the whole of the rest of the day, while I was energised.

The horribly hilly park is the same one I’ve got to run 3 miles round in May for the Race for Life (Saltwell Park, Gateshead, should anyone feel like turning up with a ‘Go Samantha!’ sign). If one mile of its merciless hills is so hard, imagine what three will feel like?

Oh, I nearly forgot. A woman tried to give me a flyer for the Great Women’s 10k Run and I was able to say ‘It’s OK, I’m already signed up for this thanks’.

Things which currently hurt:

-         My hips.  My left when I’m sitting, with a sort of stabbing nerve pain that painkillers don’t seem to help, my right when I stand up and try to move.

-         My left ankle. 

-         My right knee

-         My eyes.  Actually, in fairness that’s probably because I’m wearing contact lenses rather than because of the running.  In the interests of simplicity though, I’m choosing the blame the running.

For the first time last night, I really really thought ‘I can’t do this anymore.  It hurts too much’.

I’m taking pain killers every day just to move around like a normal person and the pain in my hip is so unpleasant that I’m struggling to concentrate at work.

I have woken up today a little more optimistic of my ability to run again but, for the first time in 4 weeks, I’m going to miss a run tomorrow.   I’m fairly bloody minded, but even I can tell I’m genuinely damaging myself.

I think I don’t like running with other people.

I thought I would, but I definitely prefer doing it on my own.

I like talking about running with others (and god knows, it’s all I ever seem to bloody talk about at the moment). I like discussing training plans and tactics and how comically bad I am with others, but when it gets right down to it, I want to do the actual sweaty bit on my own.

The problem is that when I run with others (Evil Bob, Lovely Tori, etc), I immediately:
1) Feel patronised by them having to keep down to my pace (i.e. very very slightly faster than a moderate walking pace).
2) Feel compelled to go slightly faster than I’d like to so as to ease the frustrations of my fellow runners
3) Feel that I have to use vital breath to keep up a conversation when it would be clear to any sane person that I don’t have the oxygen to spare.
4) Don’t feel I can wear my Ipod. Honestly, how can anyone run without one? I just start dwelling on every footfall and it becomes an exercise in torture. I need the nice lady in my ears to read me stories to pass the time. An hour is quite a long time to need to be distracted for.

I just can’t think of it as a sociable activity. I know some people simply thrive on the camaraderie and motivation that comes from being too humiliated to slow down (aka ‘running with others’) but it’s not for me.

In fact, I entered a new race today (‘ark at me… entering races) and Lovely Tori found out about it.

‘Are you running it with anyone?’ she asked.

‘erm, no’.

‘Ooh – I might do that with you then’.

Sigh. She’s lovely, she really is, but I just don’t like running with other people. I don’t even like that there are pedestrians on the same paths I run on.

I have struggled with my motivation over the last few days. I became increasingly sure that I was a fat idiot, whose fruitless attempts to either get fit, or loose weight were making me a fool. I headed out for a night out with my husband’s friends and arrived only to find that they’ve all lost weight. I stood, feeling enormous and ridiculous for most of the evening until eventually my husband made one joke at the expense of my attempts to run too many, and I fled in tears to a taxi and headed home.

That was Friday night.

On Saturday, though it scarcely seems possible, I actually felt worse. I was just as miserable, only now I was hung over too. I settled for having a blazing row with Mr K (actually, I just sat on a sofa eating a bit of toast while he shouted loudly what a total ‘twat’, direct quote, I was for offering to pay to have the floor re-surfaced, being upset by his anti-running jibes and for not picking up dog poo).

He can, of course, fuck off.

Which brings us to Sunday. Though I hardly felt like it, I had marked Sunday out for a ‘Long run’, which is, for me, anything of 3 miles or over. I dillied and dallied and flapped about finding equipment and generally put off the ‘going out and actually running’ portion of the day. Eventually, when it became clear that my water bottle was full, my Ipod charged, my socks adjusted and my mad hair restrained, I humphed out of the door.

And bugger me if I didn’t have luvly run. Well, it’s a relative measurement of luvly of course, because it still involved running and pain and so on… but I did 4 miles, I ran for nearly a whole hour… I overtook all the walkers with very little sense of shame and (and this was exciting) I was surprised come to the finish – I’d thought I’d still got half a mile or so to go.

Verrrr exciting stuff.

Still in lots of pain though, and had to sit with my legs elevated and bags of peas on them for half an hour or so (my Knees-Peas, as the kids called them).

I’m sure Evil Bob will knock the smugness out of me tomorrow with some bastardly uphill jaunt or something…

… but for now I’m quietly satisfied that I’m better than I was at the start. And that’s all I can ask for really innit?

Near the end of my run this lunchtime I sent Evil Bob a text which simply said ‘Damn you and your Bastard running’.

Which says it all really.

I did three miles, real life running on an actual pavement rather than on a treadmill. It was…. Ok. The route out is mostly uphill and that was pretty evil. There was a man walking behind me and I was so conscious of the fact that he was able to keep up with me while walking that I kept going a bit faster. Well I’m not built for ‘a bit faster’ and I managed to a) push my heart rate much higher than is sustainable and b) bugger my ankle again. Eventually I stopped and stood to the side to let him pass. 'Humiliating' and 'mortifying' don't quite cover the feeling of having to wobble to the side of the pavement to let someone walk past you.

After that it got a bit easier. The route is a mile and a half out, mostly uphill, and a mile and a half back, thrillingly slightly downhill. The way back was fine and I managed to run all of that without needing a walk break but the way out was hard.

And now I’m in pain, despite Evil Bob dolling me out some brufen and some sage advice regarding my injuries and, once again, my weight.

There was, if I’m perfectly honest, about a two minute period where I quite enjoyed the run – at least, I managed a smile rather than my normal stacatto grimace.

Most exciting is that a white van man was kind enough to whistle at me as I ran past. It might, I’ll concede, have been an ironic whistle, but it kept me going for the next quarter mile more than my little runner’s bottle of warm water did.

Following my last disastrous aborted run, I couldn’t shake the feeling of a job half finished. My ankle hurt and I was demoralised but I wanted to prove I wasn’t getting worse.

After trying to rest it and be all sensible for a day or so, my frustration got the better of me and I went to the local running shop. I got the nice lady there to check the way I stood, and the way I bend my legs and so on and she announced I needed a ‘neutral’ running shoe, whatever that might mean.

Actually, I’d been experimenting the night before with a home waxing kit. As with so many things, my interest had flagged halfway through so I had one smooth leg and one resembling the bottom half of a monkey suit. The nice shoe lady was kind enough not to mention it, even as she ran a hand down both calve muscles, feeling how my legs bend and so on (I’m assured that this reflects a normal fitting for proper running shoes, and not some form of sexual assault).

I tried on several pairs and some specialised running socks (who knew?). They all have exciting names like ‘Super Nova’ and ‘Shock Masters’. I dutifully put on each pair and had a little run around the shop with no clue what I was feeling for. My ankle problem doesn’t start until I’ve been running for about a mile so 20 seconds round a shoe rack really was not representative of a 3 mile torture trail. I plumped for the ones that felt the most squashy around the heel.

Armed with new shoes, the feeling of having not finished my last run became unbearable and I skipped out to the gym (this is not true, of course. I sort of slumped to it, regarded it suspiciously, but went in anyway). I set the treadmill to the slowest setting that could possibly be called ‘running’, and put a nice audio book on my ipod. I decided that I would try to do 3 minutes running and one walking for perhaps half an hour then a nice shower and off home.

Only, well, it felt quite manageable and by the time I got to three minutes running, it was clear I didn’t need to walk yet. I carried on, curious about how long I could run for.

Fify minutes. Five zero real life minutes. I did over 5ks without stopping
With
Out
Stopping.

Other people came and went on the treadmills around me. The nice lady in my ears read me a story and I gazed, mesmerised, at the shadowy reflection of my feet in the dark window in front of me. It was quite hard, my ankle was quite sore but I did it.

And (don’t tell anyone) I enjoyed it. I grinned as I ran, as it became clear I was going to make it the whole 5ks. I was so, so pleased with myself.

Three weeks ago I couldn’t run for 2 minuites, now I can do it for 50.
I don’t even care that it worked out at a 14 minute mile. So what – I did it.

It’s lucky, really, that I am not too sensitive or the last three weeks might have finished me off.

I can cope with only running a 14 minute mile. I can understand that my hips and knees hurt with the effort of lugging my huge frame along. I kind of get that my heart rate goes higher than the others I run with because of how unfit I am. I do…honestly, I get it and it's not quite enough to put me off of doing it. Everyone has to start somewhere, don't they?

Only, well… I had a nasty run out yesterday that has made me a bit concerned that I’m really really not getting any fitter at all. In fact, if it is possible, I’m pretty sure that this is getting harder, not easier. Is it possible to jog oneself into obesity?

I have, I will concede, made the following improvements over the last 3 weeks:
1) I am rosy, rather than puce/blue when I’ve finished
2) I can do 3 minutes running and one walking, rather than 2 running and 1 walking
3) I can do nearly three miles, rather than less than two. Actually, two feels quite short now.
4) I can wheeze out the odd word to my fellow runners even during the worst bits.

That completes the things that are better. Now for the much longer ‘things that are shit’ list:
1) I was supposed to run 4 miles yesterday and I couldn’t
2) I had to put on a special burst of speed to overtake a bloke walking (walking!) in front of me.
3) I got overtaken by a jogging group.
4) My left ankle is so sore tthat I had to abandon yesterday’s run and walk home, and now I have to go to the bloody physio next week
5) Apparently my shoes are ‘all wrong’. They’re Nike rinning shoes – how wrong can they be?
6) I have to wear an extremely uncomfortable ‘level 4’ support bra, which resembles nothing so much as an old fashioned corset. Ditto the knickers which stop my poor traumatised child bearing stomach wobbling so alarmingly that passers by are injured. ‘Corsetty’ is the only word I can think of.
7) At what point am I going to be in the middle of a run and think ‘cor blimey, luv a duck this is brilliant this is’…? Rather than, for example ‘Who am I kidding? I hate this, I hate running, it hurts and it’s boring and it hurts and I’m knackered and bored and it hurts and I think I’m actually getting worse….’, which was pretty much all that echoed round my head for the entire 45 minutes I was out the other day.

Contrary to all expert advice, I didn’t make a conscious decision to ‘become a runner’. I sort of fell into it, after a series of unlikely conversations lead to a chap at work offering to take me running at lunchtimes. Let's call him 'Evil Bob'.

My mum passed away near the end of January, reasonably peacefully and reasonably surrounded by her family. I’d half toyed with the thought of doing the race for life thing to try to raise some money for the good folk of the Marie Curie hospice who did good work with my mum near the end of her days.

Cut to Evil Bob picking at my niggling ‘Race for Life’ thoughts. ‘I’ll run with you’ he said. After quite a few such offers from him, I thought ‘oh sod it – why not?’

Which was, in retrospect, quite a small thought with which to start such an enormous undertaking.

I’m not what you might call a Natural Runner, you see. I’m 32, I weigh… well, lots. I’m a generous size 18 anyway. I have three young children and I’m almost terminally lazy. I drive everywhere, I eat relentlessly and I get out of breath going up the stairs. I have size F boobs, and I don't typically run so much as I do 'wobble'.

Then three weeks ago (only three weeks?! – fucking hell….) the chap at work manages to persuade me into some trainers and out onto a local road for a ‘little run’.

I have never, ever, without exception, been so completely knackered as I was when we got back. We ran less than two miles, and we ran them slowly. Actually, we didn’t even run them – we ran for two minutes and then walked for one minute – ran for two, walked for one… etc.

By the time we got back I was puce and my lungs were so overworked that, I kid you not, I had the actual taste of lung in my mouth. I was dizzy and I felt sick and I didn’t stop being bright red for the rest of the day.

I was not sold on the process.

‘It gets easier’ said Bob. Then he zipped off for his ‘proper’ run, having considered mine to be a little warm up

Sigh.