Running therapy

Eversince we’ve heard about April’s illness, my urge to run grew. As written previously, we have established a proper AprilRuns Team now and registered for a real race (scary!) – so we need to train. Early in the morning V hit the road to her tennis club to participate at her competition and I started thinking where to run and what to wear on a not-so-sunny-but-soon-to-be-very-warm day. I drank large coffee and decided to repeat my longest run to Rijpwetering. Some 16 km. Did I eat breakfast? No. Did I use bathroom? No. I just did not think about it…

… until km 3 when the full bladder announced its presence and demanded me to find some bushes. Usually I am rather kind to my body’s requests but I cannot do the impossible. This is South Holland in March, there are no bushes, trees, leaves, terrain obstacles – NOTHING to hide behind (especially not when wearing yellow):

I decided to run to the next village and try to find an open restaurant. But then again: this is a Sunday morning in South Holland: people are either in the church or on a bicycle so no restaurants to welcome wandering runners in need. Did I turn back and hurried home? No.

By the time I reached km 8, the bladder problem got a competitor: my right knee. Not my left knee, the injured one that I’ve been pampering for 2 years now in fear that it collapses one day. Not at all. It was my totally healthy and strong right knee that went on strike. So here I am, in the middle of nowhere with no money, no bushes, full bladder and needles in my knee thinking what are my options. I figured there was only one way to get home…

As I ran on thinking how desperate or embarassing would it be to ask the car drivers passing me by to give me a lift, another 2 km passed. And then running surprised me yet again: all of the sudden the knee pain was gone and so was the bladder-urge (note I did not wet my pants!). I ran additional 5 km or so home bringing the total to my new maximum of 17.2 km (and my week mileage to 40 km) – no pain, no problem.

At home, April’s wagging tail was welcoming me, her eyes suggesting to have a large brunch in the garden. And so I quickly showered and went to sit outside to play the neverending game of dropping pieces of cheese and ham as I was eating so that April could be cleaning all of them…

Procrastination on Friday night

Our gym is closed on Friday’s so usually Friday is a sportless day. But since V. decided to go swimming, I had to come up with something, too. Well, I decided to postpone the decision till later.

When ‘later’ came, it was dark and cold outside. I looked in the direction of the shelf with my running gear and before I knew it, I was filling the tiny plastic bottles with water. And suddenly there was no way back…

I left house around 9 pm and decided to run for half an hour and only then assess my strength and see what to do next. 4 km into my run I was on a new smoothly paved biking path and it felt so good that I wanted to run to its end. 2 km further on there was a nice windmill marking the centre of a small village. I did not think much, did not want to make any decisions yet, just ran.

Then after about one hour on the road, I texted V. that my route took me further than expected and that it might take another hour for me to come home. She was sligthly worried and suggested to drive towards me to pick me up. The Big M sounded like a great place to reunite but I realised that the following 4 or 5 km would drag me through a path unaccessible to cars. So I continued running and postponed the decision to be picked up until I would reach the Big M myself.

I felt rather tired by then, my knee was hurting and some of the leg muscles did not want to co-operate anymore. On the other hand, I estimated it was probably just another 3 to 4 km home, a bit stupid to call for rescue…. and I ran home.

And that is how I ran my longest run so far: 16 km.