10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About Not Finishing The Railway Run 25k

1. Dude Where’s My Exercise Band?

It all began on Wednesday night with “where’s my exercise band?”. My hamstring was a bit tight so I decided I’d try some monster walks to fix it. Made sense. My right knee didn’t agree. It pinched me Thursday morning to let me know.

Alternative version: I ran a lot over the last few months and have overloaded the tissue in the area of my right knee which is now resulting in the generation of pain. Yes, I know I’m an idiot, thanks.

2. Unsympathetic Fallacy

I think the weather doesn’t like me. The one day I get injured this year and can’t run is the sunniest warmest day of the year. I’ve run in all sort of terrible weather all winter and now it’s taken away from me the minute it gets sunny, why? why? Why can’t you take someone else’s ability to run away instead?

3. Impermanence

I don’t think I’m as worried as I used to be about being injured. I used to think every injury would be permanent. Very few things are permanent. Pain is temporary, it may last a minute or an hour, or a day or a year or like three years if you get a stress fracture and keep running on it stupidly, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. But if you quit it’s forever. Never quit.

4. Bookshelf

Because I had to take a day off running on Friday when it was sunny I used my free time to build an excellent bookshelf. It took approximately the same time as 10 miles to build. It was kind of satisfying. Not a run though. I put books in the bookshelf, the books were mainly about running. This made me sad.

5. Black Books

I made immediate use of my new bookshelf. I read the Knee section of my Clinical Sports Medicine book like it was 1984. Unfortunately my grievous knee injury doesn’t appear to have ever happened to anyone before. It’s an entirely new injury. Unique. Pinching Knee Syndrome.

6. Miracle

I ran on Saturday but my knee was still superbad. Very pinchy. I stopped after 3 miles because I was running 8 minute miles and that looks terrible on Strava, people would think that I was after getting bad or injured. The knee wasn’t hurting walking around so I thought a few hours sleep might fix it miraculously. I woke up Sunday morning after an excellent sleep and shook my leg left and right like a cat, no pain, a miracle. The warm up for the race was horrible but it always is. My knee seemed acceptable.

7. No

I really don’t think I should have bothered starting but if you don’t try you’ll never know. I’ve rarely run without something being sore, there’s always something, always. The plan for the race was to run at marathon pace or thereabouts. The first mile was fine, 6:05 but it felt like forever, at least 8 minutes, lots of pinching, very annoying, some steps were perfect, then pinchy. The only thing that I enjoyed was running over a No referendum poster, everything else was misery.

8. No

I think it was an easy decision to quit, pain is temporary but 25k of pain is not temporary, it’s a really really long time. I quit. Bailed. Pain beat me, badly. I tried and I failed miserably, the lesson is, never try, just stay in bed.

9. Run of Shame

I don’t think I enjoyed my run of shame, you feel like such an idiot walking around Blackrock in a singlet with a number on. I took the number off and put it in the bin. My knee felt alright running easy so I decided to do a lap of Blackrock so that I could tolerate watching the London Marathon. This made me feel happy because I realized that I would be able to run properly again very soon. Watching other people run when you haven’t run is probably what it’s like for a heroin addict to watch another heroin addict take heroin. You want heroin so bad.

10. ‘Tis but a scratch

I don’t think my knee will take long to get perfect. I think I will be better tomorrow, if not tomorrow then Tuesday or Friday. I don’t like injuries. I really really really like running.