As a matter of fact, I was going to title the blog entry "Will to Fail" after a song of that name by Katie Lee, which you can purchase on itunes. It's in an album called "Songs of Couch and Consultation" on which my favourite track is "Repressed Hostility Blues". I'd link to it if I could figure out how - it's worth a listen. I didn't call it that because I'm relatively certain that no one else would have had a clue about that particular reference. Katie Lee was singing this rich parody of psychiatric complaints (she has another album, brilliantly entitled "Life is just a bed of neuroses") back in the 1950s. Brilliant. My connection to the songs is via my old man, in his professional capacity (no, he's a psychiatrist. He's not a professional dad. And, no, he didn't help me professionally. No. Really. Not even just for practice).
Anyway, if you do sneak a peak, (or a listen), as a teenager I held on to this song. I thought it was much easier to fail than to succeed, and embracing it seemed the way to go. I got into the very bad habit of getting in the put-down (to myself) first, because it seemed an obvious way of being wryly entertaining, and, fantastically, not being ridiculed by others. Of course, what it does in reality is nauseatingly scream that you need reassurance and compliments from others (which they may or may not choose to give, depending on how needy and desperate you are). It is of course, a boring and tedious trait to have, and I was trained out of it with the help of some of my more abusive friends. What strikes me now, after Thursday's fiasco, is that I clearly do not have the Will to Fail anymore, in any capacity. It depresses and upsets me to fail. This is tragic, and means that my life is going to be a big disappointment in the long run. But you know, if you set small, achievable targets, you can fool yourself a lot of the time.
Anyway, on with the story. I think to say that the past four days has been a little busy would be an understatement of epic proportion. To say that I'm burning the candle at both ends would be wrong. I broke the candle into several pieces, and lit all the ends.
By the way, I shall interupt my narrative, which isn't flowing at all, to point out that my respect for Sal is increasing in epic proportions. (I remain extremely alarmed by her response to All Heart, though, it does make me question the value of entering a marathon, which I had been toying with - she's just said that running a marathon damages you. How is that good?) Anyway, back on to the flattery. I fear I may have painted too harsh a picture of Sal - I was chatting with some friends on Thursday, and mentioned the whole "I ran 18 miles on a broken pelvis" statement, (which, by now it should be clear, had a major negative impact on me) and Dave (that's Thespian Dave, for clarity, who has never met Sal, but did read the blog) said "Yes, but I had the impression it wasn't HER pelvis". Now, I've been informed by my co-runners (Nigel, and Dave, and maybe even moustachioed Chris) that if you do something WRONG that attracts the Evil Eye and incurs the Wroth of Sal, you get a note on your training schedule that says SEE ME. I believe them in this, it's already happened on my Facebook status a couple of times, although I've so far assumed in those cases that it was in jest. The ticking-off, apparently, follows (possibly also the trampling over your broken pelvis).
However, I now have reason to believe that Sal is not only eminently reasonable, but that she will drop hints to you, before she loses it (I'm wondering here about the male psyche and their ability to pick up on the hints). For instance: I did blog at some point that I hadn't really eaten, and the following week, my schedule included a note about breakfast - so she'd processed a failure, and simply made a suggestion. Obviously I then ridiculed it in my blog, but then she had suggested (unwittingly) that I run in the morning, right after a Hen Party. Likewise, I received a quiet suggestion via Facebook this week, following an observation of my night-owl tendencies on the internet, that sleeping is really important for runners, and some early nights wouldn't go amiss; this is not the first time she's mentioned this: I can see how some tolerance towards aberrations will be permitted, but at some point, if I constantly ignore them, some Quiet Words will be had. And deserved.
And those words might be "I told you so".
So back to Thursday, and perhaps a day or so before, for history's sake. Now, I'm not a big one to share illnesses (stop that sniggering. Perhaps I could amend that to "any more": this is partly through a realisation, via Facebook, that statuses stating illnesses are monumentally tedious, and therefore should only be undertaken if sympathy is an absolute imperative. But to be honest, call up your mate and get it in person. The tragic and honest truth is that no one else cares. So I figure that there is a wider lesson here, which I've tried to take). Another reason for not mentioning health, even in this blog, was the nature of the problem. So, without graphics, I've had a stomach upset for a few days. Now, I've also had the edge of a cold going on. I didn't mention this for two reasons: If I waited to be in tiptop working order, I'd never get more than a week and half's training in. Well, that's how it feels sometimes. I don't want Sal to ground me on that basis, so I thought it was better to just not tell her. And then, I'll probably be ill on the race day, so I may as well get used to how it feels running through it, right?
Well, First Defense is my preferred weapon in the armoury against the common cold. Mainly because I can claim to be snorting drugs, of course, but also because I believe it works, and, as everyone knows, belief has a lot to do with the success of these things, and cannot be overrated. So I'm snorting me drugs, which is holding off the cold nicely, and I'm trying to ignore my grumbly tummy, and I'm not letting out on my social calendar, which this last week mainly just involved Pint of Poetry on Wednesday night, but with a massive line-up of participating in a play on Thursday evening, Friday and Saturday, and preparing for a BBQ on Saturday evening, with the necessary cooking, baking, house and garden tidying; and going to Ipswich for a workshop on Sunday. But you know, I had time off work, and was confident I could achieve my training as well, because they don't call me Superwoman for nothing. (Or at all, now I come to think of it).
I technically had pace-training on Thursday, which I planned to do, as usual, at lunch time. I shunned the Natural Runners, secretly disappointed that they didn't offer to join me. Especially as I met Rob on his way back from the Natural Run, on which he had clearly been hearing about The Blog, because his face fell as he said "I still won't be in your blog, because we haven't been running together". It was so lovely to hear of someone actually wanting to get into the blog, I thought I'd give him this honourable mention (although, according to Nigel, Rob is the master of innuendo, so we can expect richer pickings when he does come out on a run with me). My day started poorly, however, as when I picked up the garmin, I realised that, having attempted to upload the data to the internet, I'd failed to recharge it. Wrong cable, see? I say I realised then. I didn't. I realised at lunchtime when I turned it on and it said "low battery".
I ignored this, and set off, happily noting that my heartrate, during my warm-up, stayed at 147 bpm, my pace being a more relaxed 11 minute mile, although for some reason, that old peroneal tendon was still playing up and didn't quieten down into the run as usual. I also found as I jogged that I was feeling really quite giddy. It was at this point that I had the dawning realisation that I hadn't eaten. Not only hadn't I eaten, the previous day I'd had a bowl of puffed wheat breakfast cereal for dinner. This was the stomach thing, you see. I didn't have much appetite. And once I'd got that point, being hungry made me feel sick too (which was why I ate the cereal on Wednesday night). I realised that if Sal found out, she was going to give me a serious talk about diet. It isn't one that I actually need - I don't habitually skip meals, and I'm on board with the idea of slow-burning meals before runs, but I figured she'd probably feel duty-bound to make sure she'd said it if she found out what I was doing. I resolved not to tell her.
At that point the Garmin died. Now I couldn't log the bloody run. I felt seriously pissed off. The heart-rate thing has started to interest me, and I haven't done any pace training since I borrowed Nigel's heartrate monitor. I also hadn't taken my phone with me, having figured that I didn't need it, what with the Garmin and all. So as I was figuring, on my watch, how many more minutes of jogging I had before I started my paces, I suddenly realised that I wasn't going to be able to know if I was doing a 9 minute mile or not. Well, actually, I'd just know I almost certainly wasn't doing one. And I thought about the impact a sprint on my calve, which was now kind of almost "hurting" as in Anita's definition, "not that kind of pain". I knew Sal had said I could run on it, but suddenly I wasn't sure how far to let the pain go. There were too many things going on in my life. There were too many things going wrong with my jog. There seemed to be a connection. I was overdoing it. I needed proper sleep, I needed to sort things out, and decide on my priorities. I needed to be well to do those things. I quit.
I decided to go home and eat, and charge up the battery, and not tell Sal anything about the lack of food thing, but to ask her about the tendon. I admitted to the inital-cold-symptoms as well. If she thought I should do it, I could still do the training in the evening.
Sal's response was prompt and definitive: the tendon wasn't serious, but a break of a few days would only help it, and the cold. A few days' break now would be no bad thing, and I wasn't to worry. The fact that suspending my training saved my final shreds of sanity from my frenetic lifestyle is still adding an uncomfortable side-order of guilt, but the tendon is still sore going up stairs today, so I'm holding by my coach's recommendation. Plus, Frank is loving it. He's also like me to point out that he is definitely cuter than the puppy dogs, and he can do the whole "upside down" thing, although would not deign to have a pilates exercise named after him.And when she messaged me on Facebook on Thursday saying "Go to Sleep"? My response: "Yes'm"
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