Learn How To Let The Running Guide...
'Have you thought of stopping running for a few days'? The nice young doctor said, I am imagining aged about half my years!
I looked at him and smiled, 'if I am hurting myself, I will of course stop' I said, 'but if there is a way to continue...'
Once again I found myself visiting a foreign doctor....
Thailand, Spain, Lanzarote and now Greece... I hardly ever visited my doctor in the UK, especially in recent years...!
We had driven around and around, asking people where this elusive medical centre was... Eventually a very old Greek man who was wearing a black wrinkled suit showed us the way. He had an olive brown wrinkled face, with olive shaped, olive coloured eyes, he offered that he spoke Dutch (no good) - and so simply signalled that he would get into the car... And he took us right to the door.....
Later....
Anadi has just appeared having been on a 'mission', while I have been working fast to complete all my 'things to do', before a two hour meet up with Tim on FaceTime... He went in search of the cream, the young doctor suggested for my foot, and he has come back with a bag bursting with goodies!
One by one he fetched the items out of the bag... Some big liniment plasters... Effervescent vitamin C, some iron capsule... The suggested cream.... And Compeed!
This morning we ran twelve miles in the clouds around Pantokrator again, the clouds swirled and opened every so often to reveal Ipsos between them, basking in sun below... But we were high up with the damp wetness around us.... Chilly if we stopped, fine if we kept moving...
I had put plasters on my blister - it is huge - and then covered it with kinesiotape - and was reminded of 'the days before Compeed', when blisters took forever to mend, like this one...
Especially if, 'taking a few days off running', wasn't a consideration for a mere blister...!
In fact taking time off for anything wasn't a consideration at one time in my life... I ran 'through' everything.... As long as I could, or rather until I couldn't...
I juddered to a complete halt when I was twenty eight... The years of pushing hard, and running from my unresolved pain, eventually 'felled me' and I could run no more... I was exhausted, sweated all night, no balance in the mornings and I slept and slept and slept...
Numerous tests revealed oddities with both my white and red blood cells, but findings were inconclusive... Rest was recommended...
Years later, when I was about forty, I was visiting my doctor as the 'non specific' symptoms, were very slightly there again, and I panicked, remembering the total 'stop' of twelve years preciously...
I saw my notes from all those years before... 'If this young woman would stop running we believe things would improve'!
I had taken a long time, a few years, to really recover from my 'chronic fatigue'. But the process had taken me more deeply into my unresolved pain, and it taught me to stay in the step... When I had recovered I trained gently gently for a marathon.
I ran always on heart rate, and never too far or too hard... I found form with an ease I hadn't known was possible... It was 1992, and as I was running along in the London Marathon, my friend Wends was watching the race on the television at her sister's house...
Suddenly I came in camera shot and they saw me on the screen...! 'Lets go and see Ju finish' she said to her husband Tony, and there they were, unexpectedly and excitedly as i crossed the line... Wends, and her sister Carrie, and Tony...!
That was a good day, I ran 2.41, my friends were there to greet me, and I had learnt how to let the running guide me... To let it take me where it wanted, I had surrendered to my bodies wisdom and discovered it knew a thing or two ...
Our run this morning passed in a flash, a moment of time... Even more so because we couldn't see more than seventy feet in front of us, we were running in a cloud....
And now I am on the terrace, the sun has been shining brightly all afternoon and the heat of the day is now leaving....
I have just had a call from St Lucia... Janai, the young runner I am sponsoring, is doing well... He is loving his running, but he needs some training shoes as well as spikes...
'Of course' I said... 'And a bag to put them in...'That's fine', I said ....