SUNDAY 4TH DECEMBER 2022
A busy, busy week – Christmas is looming with much to do at work and at home, plus there was a birthday in the house (which would’ve been well before the advent period, had my womb not been so cosy and the outside temperatures so cold back in 2010!) Personal highlight of the week was doing my first 10k run since January.
MY WHY
I started running (or rather, jogging, as we said in the 80s) in my teens. As someone with poor co-ordination and lacking in the self-confidence to partake in team sports, this has always been my go-to exercise. Exercising, like shopping, is something I’ve always preferred to do alone and pounding the pavements and pathways lends itself nicely to that. I like to swim too – again something I can do alone – but running has always been my thing, whereas consistency hasn’t. I’ve dabbled on and off over the years and have gone for long stretches without running at all for various reasons but I’m happiest when I’m back in the habit. One of the best things about not drinking at the moment is that I know it won’t get in the way of my running schedule. For the past 3 Decembers, I have been in the habit of running and I have actually found myself, whilst out on a run, working out what days I would be able to run over the festive period in accordance with what days I planned to drink most, or least, as the case may be. i.e. I wouldn’t be fit to run on 26th or 27th due to having drunk too much the days before but, if I had a day off the (excessive) booze on 27th, I might be fit for a run on 28th. God, what a palaver! When drinking, I would often force myself out for a run the next day, just to prove I could do both, and I was actually quite proud of myself for being able to run the morning after consuming the best part of a bottle of wine the night before. I’ve since read somewhere that that’s actually quite dangerous – eek! So, what gives the most pleasure – alcohol of an evening or a clear-headed run of a morning? Right now, I would take the run every time because running makes me feel good and I want to feel good. I daresay that in the future there will be times when I indulge in both but I hope that, at the very least, it will be a case of deciding when I might allow myself a couple of glasses of wine if it fits in with my running schedule, rather than trying to fit my running around my drinking schedule.
Theme Tune: Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen