The lord giveth and the lord taketh. Job 1:21
I don't mean to be dramatic and compare myself to Job out of the bible. (I don't really know the Job story, to be honest, just that God allowed Satan to 'test' him, apparently just to see how much he would take.) but my point is that my running has been interrupted lately by strange twists and turns of fate, making it difficult to plan.
Last Saturday I had a sore neck but I went out running anyway, and enjoyed the process, although crossing the road wasn't easy because looking behind me entailed turning all the way around. It got much worse that night though, and so sore that it was even sore if I had my head the wrong way on the pillow. Running on Sunday was out of the question, which didn't bother me much because it was lashing down with rain. I sat in all day in my pyjamas and made a large dent in the essay I have to write.
Monday I was feeling a lot better but had to cycle to Musselburgh in the morning and then dash back to the other side of Edinburgh to a meeting in the afternoon. I hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast and I only had 15 minutes before my meeting so I went into Starbucks (I wouldn't normally do this) and had a muffin and a coffee. The woman doing the coffees misheard my order and made me a grande Americano, which for non Starbucks officianados is about double the size of a mug - more coffee than anyone should ever drink at one sitting. I thought I would just drink half of it but it was really nice and it didn't taste that strong so I finished it up. I felt fine for the rest of the day and well into the night. At 4am I was still awake. When I got up at 6.30am for work I felt pretty shabby. By the end of my work day on Tuesday I had a banging headache. Another coffee would have fixed it but I wasn't going to get into that.
Wednesday morning I woke up feeling good! The sky was clear, I'd had a good night's sleep and I had time for a run before going to university. As I hadn't been out since Saturday I was fresh as a daisy and by the time I was up at the park I was enjoying myself. I had lots of thoughts rattling around in my head, which isn't unusual and was just thinking I was going to have a secret race with a girl in pink up ahead ( a secret race consists of pretending you're going at your normal speed but actually going much faster than usual in order to make other people think you are amazing) when I twisted my ankle for no reason at all and had to pull up sharp and stand still until the TWANGING feeling eased off. About a minute later I gingerly tested it out with a few steps of running and it seemed like I'd got away with it, so I carried on for another 7 or so enjoyable miles over and around Arthur's Seat with the sun shining and the gorse smelling of coconut.
The first two hours of university consisted of a 2 hour large unstructured person-centred group (don't ask) - for the 2nd hour of which I was aware that my ankle was getting sorer and sorer and I had to keep loosening the laces on my shoe to try and ease the discomfort. I cursed myself for not icing it or anything when I'd got in from my run but it had seemed absolutely fine. By the end of the 2 hours I could barely weight bare on it and felt a little foolish because I'd walked into that group without problems and was now unmistakeably hobbling. Kind of like the opposite of a charismatic healing. One person ran to Tescos for me and got a bag of frozen sweetcorn, for which I was extremely grateful, so I was able to ice it and put it up and I still had ibuprofen in my bag left over from my neck fiasco at the weekend so I had some of them. Someone else had arnica tablets too. Maybe they helped as well. By the end of the evening I could walk, although with a limp, and found to my surprise and pleasure that cycling was still perfectly do-able
On Thursday it was a lot better although I could still feel it. I had a good bit of cycling around town to do so at least I got some exercise. I wouldn't have run on it. This morning it was sore when I got out of bed but hasn't bothered me since. So I guess tomorrow I'll go running somewhere flat and try to be careful. Another 2 run week...
So on the one hand, when I do get running at the moment I'm feeling fresh and really enjoying it. And on the other hand I'm really not getting much training in....Maybe its all for the best. Who knows?
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