I feel like the opening paragraph of the restart of the
blog should be something deep and profound. Something that encapsulates the
grandioseness of the voyage I’m undertaking, like the opening of Star Trek, or
a made-up word that explains the size of the task ahead, like “grandioseness”.
Unfortunately I’m two sentences into the opener already (now well into the
third) and it’s far too late to change so this’ll have to do.
That’s right, I am back on the running horse, although
that metaphor makes it sound like I have a horse whilst I’m running. This would
make it easier if I was riding it, and significantly harder if I had to lead
it.
Some background for those of you who are new to this blog
– around the New Year I decided to try and build myself up to running 5k, which
I did over the course of 9 joyful weeks, where I chronicled each run in a diary
that many are calling modern day’s answer to Samuel Pepys, or rather the
question “What is being written today that isn’t as culturally significant or
interesting as Samuel Pepys’ diary?”.
This blog then mysteriously stopped around that point –
but never fear, reader! I shall give you a quick update of all the running I
have done since then.
…
Well, that didn’t take long.
Yes, sadly the running somewhat fell off once I’d
finished blogging – once the podcasts ran out I found that I didn’t have the
energy to go out and chase them. And so it remained for six months or so.
So what was it that drew me out of my self-induced stupor
and back into the world of running? In a word, madness. In two words, I’d
probably just add the word insanity. If you asked me to say it in three words,
I’d ask you why, because I think it’s abundantly obvious from the previous
answers the general gist that I’m going for.
Essentially I have verbally agreed to take part in a 10k
next March/April time. This is quite frankly a ridiculous idea (hence the
descriptive words in the previous paragraph), and I figured that if I had any
chance of covering that distance, and covering it in a vaguely respectable
time, I should start running again now. Thus, the aim is by Christmas to be
able to run 5kish consistently, and from there to build up to the 10k in early
2015. Then I’ll probably do the 10k and retire from professional sports. That’s
the dream.
It was with this in mind that I set the alarm this
morning (6:45, not too early) to start my first jog of this new training
regime.
Those of you who read my last chronicles of suffering may
recall that I used a series of podcasts from the NHS, with a person called
Laura who made it her personal goal in life to make me suffer. We didn’t always
get along. This time round, I’m going to try a slightly different series of
podcasts called “Ease into 5k”. I’ll get on to talking about how that differs
from the last series I used in a future blog post – what I will say for now is
that they promise to get me running 5k in 8 weeks rather than the 9 that it
took me last time. The jury is still out on whether that’s actually possible,
we shall see.
I decided to start from the first podcast to see if there
was any residual fitness left over from the last time I went out running. The
first week is 9 sets of 60 seconds running followed by 90 seconds walking. Last
time, when I hadn’t done exercise since approximately the time when S Club 7
broke up, this was more than enough to absolutely exhaust me, and I was
interested to see if it would do the same this time round.
Actually, I was pleasantly surprised at how fine I felt
after the first few sessions. Evidently something in my brain remembered what
I’d been doing before, because 60 seconds of running felt much shorter than it
did the last time I tried it. It felt like I was just starting to get into a
rhythm when the run was suddenly over and I was walking again. At one point
half-way through I decided to keep going past when it told me to walk, and
ended up running for 2½ minutes, stopping just as it told me to run again. I
was quite pleased with this, and it also felt a little bit like rebelling
against the system.
Towards the end, though, and perhaps fuelled by
over-exuberance, my body did start to ache a little bit. Not in an “I’m
exhausted” way (by the end I definitely could have kept going for a bit longer)
but in a “Right, I see what you’re doing here. We made a committee to discuss
this, and the general consensus among the rest of your body parts is that we’re
really not very happy about all this” sort of way.
I feel like perhaps my body didn’t quite understand what
was happening at the start, which explains why it might have felt OK to begin
with:
Ah, running. Good
idea, there’s probably a bear chasing us or something. Being eaten by a bear
definitely ruins your morning, so it’s probably best to get jogging for a
while.
Great, we’ve
stopped now. That was close. Back to pleasant walking. Isn’t this a lovely
morning? Bit cold but… oh, wait, we’re running again. Bear must have caught up.
Fair enough, they are often quite persistent. Nothing a bit of light jogging
won’t solve, let’s make this feel pleasant. No being eaten today, Mr Bear.
Yep, all escaped
this time. There’s no way that bear’s finding us now that we’ve run away from
it twice.
Hm, looks like it
has. This is strange, actually, it reminds me of a few months ago when we used
to be out three times a week in the morning to run ridiculous distances. Glad
he hasn’t taken any silly notions to try that recently…
…
Oh no.
Despite body protestations, I finished relatively happy,
feeling relatively comfortable, and confident enough that I’m going to move
straight onto Week 2 next time out, which will almost certainly be too much effort
and cause me to regress, weeping, to a week with a negative number. But we shall
see.
Last time on the blog I signed off every entry with a
running-based celebrity pun name. Unfortunately www.runningbasedcelebritypunnames.com
is now defunct and it redirects to www.namesofcelebritiesthatcanbechangedslightlytosoundlikeavegetableorotherfoodstuff.org.nz,
which will have to do for now.
Caulin Flowerell
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