'Get Up One More Time Than You Fall...'
I wandered though the village today at 7.30 in the morning to get some milk...
When I go on 'the milk run' I feel about 8 years old again, as it reminds me of my village Headley on a summers morn, with everyone starting to go about their day... It doesn't 'look' anything like Headley! But it is has the feel of a hazy summer morning....
There is a little shop that is tiny, it is a brightly painted little wooden cabin. I know the lady opens early and it is stocked full... I asked for milk and she had to fetch it for me...
'Low fat or full fat?' She asked 'full fat', I replied... I was dressed in my running kit and she often sees us run by... I think this had made her think I was a low fat milk person!
She had both in her hand, so I took the full fat in a red carton, even though she murmured.. 'Oh yes low fat' in response to my saying 'full fat please'. Another lady was there, she asked for milk too - the shop keeper asked her the same question and she also replied, 'full fat please....'
Thinking I had said low fat and that therefore the red carton was the low fat, she tried to give her the blue carton, the lady saw it was low fat so she handed it back, and the shop keeper gave her another blue carton - of low fat!
Eventually 'it was all sorted out', and we were all laughing and the shop owner said 'I thought she jogging so she wants low fat' .... not only did I put full fat milk in the counter but a packet of biscuits too!
It was a tiny exchange, but it demonstrated something that happens all the time everywhere... Making up things about each other and not listening!
Of course there are common things that link us into groups!
I can remember reading a funny article about female personal trainers, when I was one, around 25 years ago... It wrote about PT's being bright and bubbly and enthusiastic, wearing colourful track suits - I think they might have been shell suits then!! Eating oats for breakfast and driving a fiat panda - all of which described me to a tee.
And of course even now, I may drink full fat milk and enjoy occasional biscuits and cake and puds... But I do eat a healthy diet, drink lots of water, generally look after myself and would tick most of the 'assumptions made about an athlete'!
But it is still important that we meet one another without projection, that we meet one another from a 'not knowing' position, that we are conscious of the immediate judgements or feelings we have....
Many of our immediate responses to someone may we absolutely accurate, but some of them could be from what we are seeing through our own filter and our own set of assumptions, and we only truly find out if our initial hypothesis is accurate by listening to what someone has to say without inhibiting them through our own reactions...
Later Anadi and I went for a six mile run, our drummer man was sitting at his drums; the lady in our restaurant was opening up... The run went by fast, we talked all the way around and I am at last remembering what it feels like to be running fit again... Being able to turn runs out with ease, and my body isn't hurting.... The injuries are leaving me....
'Now that it's coming together, I don't know how I kept going...' I said to Anadi... I completely understand why people fall by the wayside and let go of keeping trying....
I am fortunate in having had a very long running career, I have had lots of good patches, as well as lots of injury, illness and not fit patches...!
It is a bit like heart break and loss... I've had a lot of that too and have I learnt that the pain of loss isn't any different each time it happens...
It is no less agony and no less painful... The difference of having gone through it before meant for me that I knew I could heal and find a way to live with joy again...
So even in times of heartbreak, I knew that it would pass, because I'd been through loss before...
This said, in my work with people I have seen the importance of fully grieving, because if the pain is not released then the next loss can be too much to bear... And so clearing our pain, and committing to healing ourselves deeply is vital and allows for the energy to build to fully live again...
And it is the same really with loss of running form, and the loss of freedom in my running action... I've lost it before and been in pain before... And I've got running again.
I have the experience to know that it is possible to get up again having fallen, and to learn to run free again...
