I'm not dead. Truth be told, I sort of forgot about this blog while everything went crazy for a little while. 2020 ended up as sort of a weird, blurry streak where we hibernated like animals and waited for the storm to pass.
Let me try and sum up the last couple of years before I attempt to continue recording my experiences as an amateur runner. I spent the summer of 2020 hiding indoors with no idea what was going on outside. There was a brief window in the autumn where I took part in a work competition to accumulate group distance together. It was a lot of fun and helped me get back in the saddle. After few painful sessions, I found my legs again and even began to enjoy running again.
There were some difficult times initially. I struggled to run half a mile and had to remember that it was more than a year since I was even close to being some kind of decent runner. I'd curse myself, beat myself up, regret putting my body through all this again. But in the end, it was worth it. Within a few weeks, I was back to running a nice 10K loop without stopping. It felt great, it felt like I'd found my old self again.
Then we moved. In January 2021, my wife and I found a gorgeous house in Chippenham about 30 minutes away from the flat. Everything fell by the wayside as we scrambled to find the money, pack up our entire lives, and get rid of all the things we didn't need to take. We had a lot of help from our families, but we did it. We moved into our first house together in the middle of May and by the time we stopped, half the year had already slipped away.
I started again-again. Found a nice loop around the local area and started running. I went through all the motions again; struggling to run half a mile; cursing my lack of fitnes; slowly upping the ante; and finally, settling into a decent groove and finding my pace again.
As I began the long process of getting back to some basic level of fitness, I started to enjoy myself. I even did something I've never done before: made a new friend through running. Before long, Tracy and I became running buddies, and started to inspire and encourage each other to stick to a regular routine, work out at local classes, and pick up the pace.
Now, as 2022 winds down, we're managing a good four mile run twice a week, plus a longer challenge at the weekends. I'll probably go into more detail about this in a later post.
The real reason I was inspired to reopen this dusty old blog is because of a friend of mine. My university chum Colin - the very same Colin who once waved to me as I started the marathon some three years ago - ran through London yesterday on his own challenge. He completed the marathon in five hours, thirty nine minutes, and one second. I watched the broadcast on TV and followed his progress in the app. The whole time, I smiled to myself. I knew exactly where he was on the route and what he would be seeing. I described the course to my wife as TV cameras captured forty thousand runners rushing through the city. It was like being there all over again. All those old feelings came rushing back.
Maybe it's time I stopped with these little runs and started pushing myself even more. I know I can run 10K. I can do nine miles fairly comfortably (albiet with a lot of swearing and grunting). Perhaps it's time to aim for some new challenges...?
