Pain

The problem with the swimming, aside from the obvious “overdoing it” thing, was the additional amount of pain I found myself in. So far, this rushed training thing seemed to be condensing injuries into my training programme as well as actual training, in a most unsatisfactory way. While my back was still perfectly noticeable, I now found I’d developed a pain in my metatarsals in my right foot. I put this down to swimming a length of the pool while suffering from such extreme cramp that one of my toes was sticking out at an odd angle. My back was also gently humming to itself. What with the bruise on my knee from falling over, the threat that at any point my calves might cave, I was starting to feel like a crock. Still, there’s an old saying that says you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs and injuring every part of your body, including areas you didn’t know you could injure. I think that’s how it goes, anyway.

I met Nicola on my way out to run, and informed her of the novelty ailments I now seemed to be suffering. She speaks my language: she told me about her t-shirt that reads “I run. I run slower than a tortoise swimming through peanut butter, but I run”. With these fine words, I set off. I felt that longer than 4 miles was in order, so I ran up the river to Ferry meadows. Along the way, Facebook Ian (known thus because it’s the only sphere I know him in, never having actually verified that he’s a genuine person – but it seems likely because he’s a friend of Sally’s) spoke to me via the magic of runmeter, saying “That’s not a heart”. It was nice that my little heart adventure made an impact. I wondered what I could do about this lack of heart in my run, and realised that I was nearly at the golf course. Maybe I could freestyle a heart? I thought that as long as I anchored the point, the rest should be OK. I worried that I’d get shouted at by golfers for running across the green, and that the satnav would be too vague to pick it out. I didn’t do too badly though, although in this case, I’m not sure it showed up unless you zoomed in on it.

When I went for tea that afternoon, I found a couple of colleagues in the kitchen. “I see from the way you’re holding your back that you’re still suffering, Emma” Naomi observed “How’s that marathon looking?”. “Oh I think it’s doable” I told her breezily, maybe more so than I felt. And apparently I wasn’t fooling anybody. Jonathan the Rock watched me massage the small of my back and suggested that I could perhaps do the race in a wheelchair. “I think that might be more effort on my back than running it” I said. “Oh, I didn’t think you should operate the wheelchair yourself” he said swiftly “I was assuming someone would be pushing you”. This take was an interesting one! He was holding my sponsorship form. “I finished reading your email today” he informed me gravely, somehow managing to imply without explicitly saying so, that the email had been far too long “and I’ve got your sponsorship form here.” At this point he proffered a tenner in my direction. “And here: you can put this away now. But if you aren’t strong enough, don’t do it, Emma”. I nodded, without meaning it. “I see my words have sunk in.“ (Jonathan seems to have an uncanny ability to accurately tell what I’m thinking – I must be more careful)  “But there’s no point in injuring yourself for this, it simply isn’t worth it. Running when injured is just going to make you worse, for longer – who knows how long. It’s how I injured myself. You can keep the sponsorship money, and run a different race later on if you want to.”

Because that's going to happen.