I made it to forty kilometres this morning. It hasn’t been without cost - my body is slowly falling to pieces around me. With no recovery days in-between, each run is becoming more difficult. The weather hasn’t helped either.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m running 100km throughout September to raise funds for Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London. I’ve never done anything like it before, and had no idea going into it if I might even be able to do it.
There’s a temptation in my head to keep going - to keep amassing the kilometres - rather than do “just enough”. If I get far enough ahead, I can start taking days off as we approach the end of the challenge. Of course then a little voice in my ear says “if you keep going, you’ll have even less left…”
Quite predictably a few others on the fund-raising Facebook group have noticed the flexing I mentioned the other day - and they have not kept quiet about it. Not at all. Rather than think “wow - they must be good” in response to anybody running 10km of an evening, they are instead posting long-winded essays complaining about how unfair it is that other people are doing so well - and then listing endless excuses cloaked in fury, spite and anger.
Oh dear. I’m keeping out of it - just posting my selfie each day (displaying my sweaty, knackered post-run grin) and proof of distance from Strava. I occasionally write a few words about how much my body is starting to fall to bits in response to the lunatic escapade.
Anyway. Enough about that. This isn’t a running blog - or at least, it’s not supposed to be. There’s nothing quite so insufferable as the army of dieticians, beauticians and snake-oil marketers that pollute much of the “health and wellness” part of the internet.
I don’t really have much else to share today. This stupid crusade has kind of taken over my life.
Did I write about the old computer arriving? There’s a Windows 98 PC on the desk next to me - installed with all of the software I had about twenty five years ago. Of course now I’ve built it, installed it, and tinkered with it, I’m having to admit to myself that it’s actually not much use to anybody. You should see Lotus Organiser though - it’s a thing of beauty :)