Wednesday 12 February 2014

Week 6 Run 2 – The One With The Final Recovery Walk

Today was a very sad day. And not just because I found myself getting up at 6:30 to go running again (feeling a distinct lack of motivation this week to venture out into the cold to exhaust myself before my working day has even started). But today was the last day in the plan where there is a recovery walk built in. From here on in, it’s running all the way.

Oh joy.

Today was a straightforward (to understand) 10 minute run, 3 minute walk, 10 minute run. Basically what I had to do last Friday, only with a bit of a break in the middle. I presume it was because of the break, but I finished much less tired than I did on Friday, in that I only felt that half my limbs were going to fall off, rather than believing that they all had and that what I thought was me running was actually a vivid hallucination brought on by dehydration and lack of having a healthy snack.

My legs were still very sore this morning and the first few minutes of the run were not the most comfortable. They do say “No pain, no gain”; although notice that they don’t claim the converse to be true. It could also be the case that “Pain, no gain” holds and it’s just not possible to gain anything. Which would be a pain (and thus not a gain).

Regardless of whether or not there is a causal link between the two, it meant that for the first half of the run I was running carefully because my legs hurt, and in the second half I was running carefully because my chest hurt. Apparently this is supposed to be progress.

The highlight of the run was undoubtedly being able to stop halfway through for a recovery walk, which genuinely did a pretty good job of getting my breath back despite being only 3 minutes. Maybe I am getting fitter and it’s just that my brain hasn’t let the rest of my body know yet that it’s not supposed to hurt. Hopefully the message will get across soon; maybe I should swallow something for them to read that might help accelerate the process. Perhaps an exercise book?

Putting aside running for a second (gladly) I’ve noticed what can only be described as a proliferation of young people on bikes out in the mornings recently. Given that they frequently stop and go up to doors and have brightly coloured bags on, I presume they’re delivering papers, but I prefer to think that they’re all friends and have agreed to meet up this morning, but none of them can remember where they’re supposed to go so they’re cycling round Kenilworth hoping to find somebody, only every now and again they lose hope and decide to try knocking on the door of a nearby house to ask for directions.

There are genuinely quite a lot of them, though. There must be so many that there’s one guy whose sole job is to deliver papers to all the other guys out there delivering papers. But then who delivers his paper? They might end up needing infinite children to do the job. Or I guess he could deliver to himself.

I feel like I should conclude by observing a moment of silence for the recovery walk. I ask you, loyal reader of the blog (unless you’re not a loyal reader, in which case I ask that you ignore the word “loyal” in the above sentence, which should save you a bit of time and would allow you to give two moment’s worth of silence instead) to join me at some point today, just for a second, to walk somewhere and not say something. If you need some space to do that in, here’s a little bit for you:







No flowers.


Rickovery Astley

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