Brave New World: part one

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.”

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1919).

“About a month to a few weeks ago I was talking with colleagues about how we were going to work around having to stay at home, a couple of weeks ago I had to take my daughter home from university and this week I found out my mother died alone from Coronavirus. All I ask is that people take this seriously and follow the guidance….” (Anonymous).

Coronavirus (also known as Covid-19) has turned the seemingly innocuous flu illness into something far more sinister and deadly, which step-by-step has had an insidious effect upon the UK, and the rest of the world for that matter, than any of the other social upheavals that have taken place recently (e.g. Brexit, Trump election, the Syrian civil war, etc.). It is hard in the current situation to look back on and envisage how the general mood was towards Covid-19 when it first surfaced in China. The spread of this virus was initially greeted with little attention by the media and the public in late December 2019 to early January 2020, with more focus on Brexit and the changes that the Johnson Government were going to be bringing in. A good explanation of how Covid-19 began can be found here, in particular the article provides a link to the John Hopkins University dashboard on how the pandemic is progressing globally.

Finished with February

I would like to give a narrative of how I overcame the plantar fasciitis, that my running became easier in February and that- as I write this blog- I am relishing the prospect of getting stuck into some hard training. Unfortunately for me things have not worked out that way. Life has a habit of showing the sometimes vast that lies between how you want something to and how it actually turns out, whilst in the process providing an incredibly humbling experience. Many positive catchphrases refer to these moments as passing storms or learning experiences, which they can be; however it certainly feels like I am in the middle of it and it is starting to become ever harder to see how things will play out. What I do know in this present moment is that I am going to have to take a step back in my running and focus on healing myself before I can stuck into serious training and racing. This in turn has led to the hard but relatively straightforward decision to not run the London Marathon 2020.

Inconsolable

2020 has not got off to the best start for me. In some ways I feel that my running has been stopped even before it has begun this year, so in all honesty there isn’t really much to report on for my running in January 2020. If I had one sentence to summarise my running in January, it would be one damn thing after another.

After Valencia, and reflecting on the year I had in 2019, I felt energised and ready to take on 2020. I didn’t really have the same problems that I did after London 2019. My hamstrings seemed to be fine and it was only my right ankle that seemed to be stiff/ sore. Unfortunately it was that ankle, or rather the sole of my foot, that was to become the problem for me in January. When I started returning to training in late December 2019, the sole of my foot started to become increasingly painful. Of course I did the smart thing and ignored it, thinking that I could just keep on running. Luckily for my sake I had pre-arranged a physio appointment, and casually mentioned the pain in the sole of my foot. With one swift and precise pressure point of the physio’s thumb just above my heel, I nervously enquired as to what the severe jolt of pain was; his reply was soul destroying (see what I did there?): I had plantar fasciitis. The best way to describe this problem, I wouldn’t technically call it an injury, is insidious. It lurks in the shadows waiting for you to think that you are on the mend, until you think you can quickly run for the train and then you are unpleasantly reminded that there is no way you are running for a while.

This has meant for most of January I have been cross-training, which is incredibly boring. I just can’t find myself being able to mentally make the switch from ticking over the miles on a treadmill to sitting on a bike. It gave me a new respect and a certain sense of envy to triathletes, even making me consider how I could get into triathlon, that someone could consider swimming in a pool or being on a bike for that long. Though they would probably say the same about me running on a treadmill. What the cross-training did allow me was time to think of as many puns on my new found problem: I have been soul searching, save our souls, I think I might have put my foot in it, etc. I should probably keep the jokes to myself. I managed to keep the consistency going with my cross training, though I think I definitely need to buy cycling shorts if I have to do anymore cycling sessions over an hour. I even grew to like cycling and rowing. I began to start gingerly running again with a good 12 – 14 week window to prepare for the Virgin London Marathon 2020.

My hopes for this comeback were dashed as I then succumbed to a chest infection, which wiped out that cushioned training window for London. Speaking with my coach, he still seems to think that I could prepare for London and that we can reassess at the end of February. I am secretly hoping that I have some fitness that has carried over from Valencia, though at this stage I don’t want to get my hopes up. During the Summer of 2019 I saw this article from the Trail Runner Magazine called: Dream Big and Go For It. I had saved it on my phone for this very moment that I am going through now.  Whilst I love running, I am slowly coming to realise that when you are passionate about something you have to take the rough with the smooth. There will be moments when things don’t seem to be going your way and you can’t see a way out, that’s what happens when you care about something. David Roche- the article’s author- talks about how it’s in our deepest, darkest moments that we learn about ourselves; far away from the motivational quotes we see on the marketing of the big sports brands and Instagram feeds. It’s in those moments that we can build and grow. I hope I can treat my foot in this way and give London a pretty good shot, isn’t it worth taking the risk and seeing what happens?