Guess who’s back? Back again? To those of you who are
expecting Slim Shady at the moment I’m probably going to be somewhat of a
disappointment by comparison, but it’s actually me.
A week’s break has hopefully done me the world of good
(it’s odd that I feel a lot better after a week of no exercise than I did after
many weeks of exercise – support for my hypothesis that exercise doesn’t do you
any good). My legs hurt a lot less than they did, I can walk on my foot again,
and hopefully at some point this week I’ll get some new running shoes that
don’t have a personal vendetta against my feet, which will hopefully spur me on
to bigger and better things! (I’m thinking rollerskates might not be a bad
idea)
Still, when 6:30 came around this morning, it was still a
bit of a challenge to get out of my airbed (new mattress comes on Wednesday,
this might be the most excited I’ve ever been about furniture), dig out the old
running gear and go on the old jog-raphy field trip.
I optimistically set out on the same schedule as I had
been on last week – a 28 minute run without stopping. I had no idea how fit I
would be after a week off, since the last time I took a break from exercise it
lasted around half a decade, but I thought I’d dive in at the deep end, because
what’s the worst that could happen? Well, in the analogy, probably death by
drowning or by being eaten by sharks, so maybe we should avoid allegories in
this case.
It’s amazing how at this time of year, even a week makes
a huge amount of difference to the light level, it was pretty much full
daylight when I left the house. At least, I’m fairly sure that’s what it was, but
everything was very foggy. I’d also decided that in an effort to reduce weight
as much as possible and make my run easier, I’d go out without my glasses, so
things were naturally slightly blurry anyway. The whole thing ended up with the
impression of me running through a video game from the late 90s, a very Silent
Hill vibe going on.
The pace was OK, and for the first half I wasn’t feeling
too bad at all. However about halfway round I started to get quite tired, and
with it I lost a bit of confidence in my planned route. It would have worked
but would have committed me to running the full time and I didn’t know yet if I’d
be able to do this – I didn’t want to be found on the pavement later half-eaten
by a shark. So I decided to adapt like a universal adaptor, and take an
alternative route that was shorter and would take me past my house at about the
20 minute mark, and I could decide then if I wanted to finish the run or not.
Unfortunately I got slightly confused about the route,
missed the footpath I was aiming for and ended up in an alternative footpath
that was going through a field. Although given the recent weather, field was an
optimistic definition and it seemed a lot more like a mud factory.
The title of this blog is “the field trip”, and the
punner within me would have been delighted if I’d fallen over at some point
during this part of the run. The sensible tenth of me, though, didn’t want to
make such sacrifices for comedy, and so the pace slowed quite substantially, to
a walk in places, as I attempted to navigate, Bear Grylls-style, a field in
rural Warwickshire. There were some worms and I wasn’t tempted to eat them, so
I didn’t go full Grylls, but I did negotiate dangerous terrain (mud) and
wildlife (there was somebody walking a dog I’d seen a couple of minutes
earlier) in perilous conditions (light wind and only just above freezing) so I
think that counts.
Having survived my harrowing ordeal (farming pun alert),
I got back to the main business of the day, running. In a way, the field trip
worked out quite well despite only being a minute or two, because it gave me a
bit of time to catch my breath. Sadly a week away from sport meant my catching skills
weren’t too good and it went away again shortly afterwards, but it was nice
whilst it lasted.
I did summon up the willpower to pass my house and
complete the full 28 minute run, although I was exhausted by the end. The air
was so moist during the run that I could feel the water in my eyelids when I
blinked towards the end, which kept me amused enough for the last couple of
minutes to see me through to the end.
At the moment there’s very little in the way of leg pain
(although that will come, it always does), and so hopefully I’ll be able to
resume the final push towards the 5k target by the end of next week.
In other news, whilst driving in to university this
morning I was temporarily stopped just before getting into the car park by two
carefree ducks who wandered in front of my car and showed no signs of moving. I
couldn’t quite find my horn to try and scare them off; fortunately some
friendly passing builders came to my aid and shooed them off the road. Nothing
to do with running but an interesting start to the day.
Alexander Pain (pun based on the Oscar-nominated director
of Nebraska. I’ve never heard of him before but it requires minimal effort on
my part and is vaguely topical).
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