1) The knowledge that the reservoirs have been re-stocked and the ground is rich and moist makes me feel safe and replete.

2) In the fleeting moments when the sun DOES shine, the grass is all the more verdant, the colours deliciously intense.

3) I can’t run at the moment because – seven months on – I’m still recovering from an injury.  The rain makes this a tiny bit less frustrating.

4) Due to that same running injury, there is only one pair of shoes I can wear at this point in time – and those shoes require socks. I’m glad it’s chilly.

5) I had vowed to make progress in my garden this summer but – as ever – haven’t had time. I feel all this rain kinda lets me off that one.

6) Sports Day was cancelled.

7) I am at a stage in life when I feel sad and full of grief.  The rain has made me feel that the world is weeping with me.

Image on blog menu page @Skippy3E

I have come to understand there is something that is more of a challenge than getting fit – it’s how to be happy when you can’t.  

Trying to recover from plantar fasciitis

When I realised my plantar fasciitis was brought about by morning spurts around the park, I didn’t run for two months (I swam instead) in the hope that rest would get me better. This has worked to some extent but not completely.

So now I’m trying a different tack.  I’m doing exercises to help my heel every day and trying to ease myself back into running kilometre by gentle kilometre.

And doesn’t it feel good? Doesn’t it feel great to be out in my running shoes again? To be getting fitter rather than slobbier? To be toning-up rather than filling-out? To be moving in the direction of a solid, firm torso rather than a wobbly blob blancmanged at the end of the sofa?

Getting fit is easy – it’s resting that’s hard

And that is my point:  getting fit is the easy bit. All it requires is a bit of will-power. If we decide that is what we want to do, most of us can do it.

But my aspirations are deeper. I want to learn to be as happy when I am recovering from a running injury as I am when I am getting fitter.

I want to embrace the whole of life and life involves being tired, being ill, being old and being injured.

How to be happy when you are becoming a wobbly blob

Even if I were to run a marathon, what would I do when I had done it?  No one can’t get fitter indefinitely. The time has to come when I am becoming less strong and becoming what I (in my fear) perceive as a wobbly blob.

My challenge is this – to be happy when I’m moving in that direction too. Unless I can crack that,  I’m only living half a life – and the easy half at that.

I’ve liked them all, and I’ve learnt different things from each.

But as I nurse a running injury I’m thinking about what I need in order to be able to run without doing as much harm as I do good.

That’s got me onto imagining what I really want my personal trainer to be.

My ideal personal trainer would be someone who:

• Speaks the language of sleep and rest as eloquently as he talks of exertion
• Understands that a woman’s strength waxes and wanes with the moon
• Is as skilled in the fine art of listening to the body as he is in pushing it
• Appreciates that a body in winter has different needs from a body in summer
• Grasps that time spent exercising is time that would otherwise be spent earning money or being with the family and so needs to be kept in balance
• Knows nothing in nature goes on getting fitter and stronger…but goes in cycles of fattening and leaning, of working and resting, of hurting and healing.

A 5km run is said to be for families and beginners. But despite years of working out at the gym, I would feel defeated after running little more than half that distance. “How do other people do it?” I wondered. “I can’t carry on any more…”

It all changed last Saturday

That was until last Saturday, when it was such a glorious spring morning I decided that instead of working out in the gym, I’d go for a jog around Kings Heath Park.

I had already found out that a figure of eight in Kings Heath Park is 2km, so I decided to do one and a half circuits and call that my workout for the day.

I started off. The frost on the grass was glistening like pearls in the low-morning sunshine. The bare trees stood in sculptural silouettes against the clear blue sky.   Tiny varieties of daffodils and snowdrops were peeping shyly from the earth.  The birds were calling to each other, reminding me of other dawns I had witnessed, other times when I am overwhelmed by the sheer sensuality of being alive. I completed one lap.

Praying on the second circuit

On the second circuit, replete with voluptousness, I decided to pray. I remembered a baby I knew who was in hospital, for one loop of the eight.  I thought about the people of Japan, for the second.  Every time I glanced at the roofs of the Kings Heath terraced houses, I would think of the people who lived in them, whose names I didn’t know but whose neighbourhood I shared.

“I’ve just run 4km,” I realised as I finished the lap.  “How come I couldn’t run 4km on a treadmill? Isn’t that a great example of the connection between body and spirit? Doesn’t that just show the fallacy of thinking of the body as a fixed, physical entity?”

And with that, I thought I may as well do another 2km circuit – and I did.