This will be the last post for a while about running - I promise. Fitness blogs are insufferable at the best of times - which is why I’ve signed up for a social network specifically for fitness lunatics. Somehow I don’t think they’ll let me become an honorary fitness lunatic, on account of liking pizza too much.
After finishing the training course today and clearing immediate emails I slipped on some of the running kit that was bought for my last birthday (and has sat in a bedroom drawer for the last 11 months), and set out into the cold night air. Holy crap was it cold!
Off the back of one previous run on Sunday morning, I set out towards town probably a bit too quickly. At the point I would normally have turned back towards home I still felt ominously good, so pressed on. A voice in one ear was saying “this is a mistake - you’re going to get injured”, and a voice in the other ear was saying “bugger that”. If I had been bothered to look at my watch at the halfway point, it would probably have looked impressive… that was before I started to run out of beans though.
The last mile towards home was hard. My legs can do it easily. I just have to be careful of my feet, which I’ve had problems with before. The unexpected problem this evening - in the cold air - was a runny nose, that ended up clogging up my throat too. Ew. I won’t carry on describing that too much.
It’s funny - as soon as you get talking to anybody who actually goes running, any hint of the “pretty people runners” you see walking around in their new shoes and kit vanishes. You start hearing uproarious tales of weeing in bushes, throwing up in the street, leaving the house with spectacular bed-head hair, and basically not caring much any more. I can completely understand that now.
When you’re headed towards home, you don’t really care about anything any more. You’re half watching your watch, half listening to your breathing, and half cursing about pedestrians dawdling around like mindless numpties.