So I went up to Sal today, and waited for her to finish her mouthful of cream cake (Oh yes, Fit Naturally! Well, OK it was her birthday. That's why I didn't take a photo of her for the page.) then said "Ow". She said "Yes?" I said, "It hurts. There.". She said, "That's your peroneal tendon. You can run on that, it'll be OK". Then she followed it with, and I don't mean for this to develop into a catchphrase or anything, but this is a quote, "I ran 18 miles on a broken pelvis". Now, as an illustrative example of why it would be OK to run on a hurty leg, "I ran 18 miles on a broken pelvis" is not giving me the reassurance that I'm looking for. Especially not after coupling with Nigel's "After Sal broke me" comment (which he may have asked me not to repeat today, but it wasn't a very clear instruction), I'm beginning to wonder about the validity of taking her on as a coach. Mind you, it could be a fitness freak thing. After today's main event, which I shall get onto in a minute, I related this anecdote to Christine, who is a former running freak (until she broke...). She said, and I quote, "Yeah, I was with her, it was really funny!" She honestly said that as if it were really funny. "No, it's not funny. She broke her pelvis". The funny thing, apparently, was that Sal had spent 18 miles saying it might be a sprain. I said I preferred Anita's approach, who says "If it hurts, don't do it." Christine said "That's the difference between pilates and running...".
Anyway, I bullied Chris into sending round an email saying we'd run round the rowing lake instead of the usual Tuesday jog around Fengate (2.5 miles), and as the GI people perked up with interest, someone asked why I was keen on this. "Because SHE says I have to run 50 minutes". Sal perked up at this and said brightly "So the rest of you may as well suffer too". I couldn't have put it better myself. Chris duly sent out the email saying "and none of this short nonsense" and for some reason Ian got huffy at around that point, even though he got a muffin yesterday and no one else did. You've got to be nice to the short people after all.
Well we set off with quite a goodly crowd - Chris, Nigel, Dave, Puff, and even Paul came with us. Paul and I flashed our garmins at each other, which is as near as runners get to flirting, and Dave chuckled because he has the advanced 405, which had already picked up the satellites, so we called him a flash twat. Actually Paul had some sort of satellite dysfunction (I'm going to get into loads of trouble now) and said he was going to wait for the garmin to start working, so we lost him. Nige and Dave started making headway, and I realised I was going to need to keep up with them. This is what is known as "instinct" among runners. I didn't know how much I was going to need them. Tom is great at keeping up, although he does maintain the puffing all the time, which makes you twitchy about where you put your phone and whether it will have enough signal, and whether you will be in a place that is accessible by ambulance.
I informed the speedies that we were going at 8.5 m/m, which was faster than my pace training, and I wasn't going to be able to maintain "conversational speed" at that pace. It was **almost** as if they exchanged relieved looks with each other. Anyway, they conceded, and slowed down to 9.5 m/m (by the way, I've translated the base 60 into decimal, mainly because I don't know if you're allowed to use decimal places in base 60). This turned out to be critical to my survival. I mentioned, along the railway, that I was getting quite tired, and if I were by myself I'd probably walk. Dave brushed this comment away, and told me I was fine, and craftily changed the subject to the ripening plums along the route.
We got around the new railway crossing, which Nige hadn't seen yet, with its little slalom course to slow everyone down. Dave said that when he's doing 8 m/m, it really throws off his pace. Ha ha! I can dream. Anything to slow him down, was my thinking. Maybe I'll have a word with the council... Nige, already picking up on my suffering, shared his water with me, which shows he is a gent, and a pal too, because he knew I got to slow down to drink it.
Well, by the time we were at the rowing lake, which was about 3 miles, I really wanted to die. I could feel quite a strong gravitational pull on me, that was making me slow down and fall to the ground. A massive resistance was required to stop this from happening. "You OK, Emma?" (Dave). "Yes. No". "She's OK. She answered!" They did let me slow down to 10.5 m/m, although distressingly, Dave and Nige slowed down too. I knew that if they hadn't, I'd have walked as soon as they had gone ahead. I may have said this aloud. I didn't need to. I looked enviously at some girl sunning herself, perched on a wooden mounting board by the water's edge (I mean to mount boats), and mentioned to Dave how I wanted to be where she was. "No you don't." he said firmly "That's a rowing lake. You'd look ridiculous". "Asleep on the grass then?" I begged, "In the pub?" He conceded that the pub was the right answer. Showing how exhausted I was, and that presence of mind was certainly absent, I forgot I had a tenner in my pocket, and could have bought a round of drinks. Dave told me about a half marathon called Grunty Fen, where they serve beer on the way round. "Beer?" I queried. He called ahead "Nige? Done the Grunty Fen?" "They give you beer!" he said, unprompted.
Back to the river, and I was sure I was going to die. I mentioned the fact that the Natural Runners were really helping me to go on, not mentioning that I was holding them personally responsible for this, and that not even Sally would have stopped me walking, ergo, it was their fault. Paul (who rejoined us at the top of the rowing lake, by running the opposite way and hence being sure of catching us up - smart) encouraged me by talking about perseverance, and achieving goals by slowly building up; and Nigel encouraged me by pointing out that the nice thing about me was, if I was too out of breath to talk, I could have a conversation in my head! But he still shared his water with me, so I didn't take umbridge (No, we didn't plan to kill him later did we? Shh, not out loud.).
I found breath to ask whether there were any wild animals that naturally did long distance running. Which is one lovely thing about my organisation - (a) there are people in it who know the answer to these things and (b) they don't think it's an odd question. Even though the question occurred to me from thinking about the term "Natural Runners". Dave said he couldn't think of any, while Paul wondered about wildebeest. Nige said, we evolved into runners more than any other animal, and our tenacity at hunting meant that we can outrun all animals, so no, we are the best at running. (I felt an evolutionary failure at that point. I was feeling distinctly bad at running.) Furthermore, he added, the reason we can outrun them is we sweat more, they can't cool down, and we can. "Ah", I said, "That'll be why women are attracted to sweaty men, they must be better hunters". Either, the sun had gotten to them, and they missed my irony, or I was incoherent in my fatigue anyway, and they just thought it kinder not to get me to repeat anything, but they let that one go without comment. Or maybe took it as a compliment?
Amazingly, though, Nige told me I should read "Born to run", which is where he'd gleaned all this fascinating but strangely useless information. It was amazing because only yesterday, my friend Corinne had recommended exactly the same book. I wondered aloud whether the nearest to long distance runners might be migratory birds, at the same point that we passed someone smoking a massive reefer, which made me think about flying home.
Well, you'd be proud of me. Actually, there' only one person I want to be proud of me, and for a change, it's not my mum. (Now that definitely shows how scary she is). I finished the run. I even ran faster for the last home straight. Then I hobbled back into the office, the peroneal tendon threatening to become a perennial problem. I hobbled straight over to Sal, who'd left me a note saying "see me. bring your shoes", and she actually looked completely baffled. "But you're not running in those? They're trail shoes...?" I exchanged a glance with Babs that meant "WTF?" But Babs isn't running in anything, especially not trail shoes.
I'm on a mandate to go and buy shoes. Running shoes. That's certainly the definition of mixed emotions for me...
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