An Adventure
When it's not about the time or the distance.
“What’s holding you back?” said Dad, a genuine question, innocently delivered. I was home-home for a few days, staying with my parents while I had some work in London. The journey into the city is shorter from theirs, and it’s a great chance to see them. I’d told them that I was going for a run with a friend this week and I was a bit nervous about it because it was going to be the furthest I’d run since June. “Is it from when you came off your bike?”
“No, that’s fine now, I’m just still coming back from the weird fatigue thing. And I’ve got a niggly knee.”
Mum rubbed my knee. Dad said it’s all better now. That, my friends, is parenting.
My friend Jen was really sweet about it. She reassured me that we’d go slow, we’d just have an adventure, and if it’s not working we can just peel off. We were doing the circuit of Bath - a 20 mile loop around the city. We would run from the Dundas aqueduct along trails and through the city’s surrounding villages until we trundled back along the canal to where we started. Both of us had a few miles to run to actually get to our start point, so it really was going to be a long one.
The hours passed in a flash. Suddenly we were at Solsbury Hill where I said I might peel off to get the bus home, thereby not completing the route. But we were mid-chat and in a good rhythm. No, I’ll push on. We hadn’t even had our sandwiches yet. The only indicator I had for the passage of time was my watch buzzing me every hour to remind me to eat. Then the Dundas aqueduct hoved into view. We’d made it, we’d each run over 20 miles and spent the whole day outside, in the best way, in motion on trails and fortunately for me, in great company. It wasn’t about the distance or the time. It was just a really lovely day.
I couldn’t have done it without Jen, and I’m grateful to my dad for planting that little question. I think I have been overly cautious for a good few weeks. I am better now, my body isn’t going to fall apart if I push it a little bit. I even ran back to Bath bus station, doing an extra little loop to get my distance to a nice round 42km.
I’ve run further than that enough times now that I should know full well that it is possible. But still the question floats across my mind: how much further could I go?
What’s holding you back?
In other news…
This is a sweet little film from Adidas Terrex about Olympic climber Shauna Coxsey balancing her ambitious training alongside motherhood:
I read about this artist in Sidetracked magazine:
https://www.instagram.com/david_popa_art/
The article was about him spray painting portraits onto ice floes using only natural materials - charcoal and water. The artworks are large and impermanent, the ice literally cracking and drifting beneath him. I recommend the magazine (this was in issue 30), but also, check out his work. It’s quite remarkable.