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

It’s a poem that has kept me steady in the shaking of living with Multiple Sclerosis too.

For copyright reasons I can’t quote it all, but there is a line that brings strength as I come to terms with leading a life that is slower than I would wish: I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Enjoy The Waking by Theodore Roethke.

Go slowly, friends.

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.