Metamorphosis
Working with what you have.
Alright, sorry friends, despite using this blog to hold myself accountable I did not make it to the Corsham Running Club inaugural 5k handicap race on Thursday evening. There are confusing things going on with my body and mind, for the first time they are things I cannot pin down, and I just need to take each day as it comes. On Thursday, I mainly only had energy to bop along to the hold music on the phone to the doctor’s surgery. It’s a good little tune to be fair, it was stuck in my head for the rest of the afternoon.
Meanwhile, I’ve been churning a few other things over in my mind. I remember learning in an English Literature seminar at university that Franz Kafka struggled with plot, so he enhanced all the other aspects of his writing (character, style, language) to hide it. I cannot since find reference to it, I only have the memory of where my lecturer stood in the classroom and the quality of the light through the window on his back, but it’s something that really stayed with me. I struggle with plot, and it was a comfort to think that I could instead lean into the other aspects of writing I most enjoyed, and in fact prefer reading.
I thought about this while I was watching the Olympics, and in particular, Michael Johnson’s analysis of Matt Hudson Smith’s 400m race. He came 2nd in the final, he ran a truly beautiful last bend, but Michael Johnson said he used energy on that bend that he could have saved for the final 100m where Quincy Hall chased him down. But you do what you can, you play to your strengths, and Johnson had this to say: “You can work on your weaknesses but that will only get you so far. You can keep working on something you don’t have, or you can work on something that you do.”
Elite ultra runner Abby Hall is racing UTMB next week. She had an exceptional season in 2022, with podium positions at Transgrancanaria, CCC and Transvulcania, and there was much interest in how she would perform at UTMB 2023. But then she had a completely freak accident on a training run in July of that year and broke her foot. She’s been on a massive journey of recovery, physically and mentally, and is all set to toe the line of the 100 mile race this year. I listened to Finn Melanson’s recent interview with her on the Singletrack podcast (well worth a listen - she is such an eloquent and dynamic interviewee). She said she asked her surgeon, “When will I be back to normal?” to which he replied, “Well what is normal? Were you normal six months ago?”
As a runner, are you ever normal? What is normal for you?
So what I’ve been mulling over is this: we all have chunks bitten out of us somewhere, whether through injury, preference, upbringing, genetics, whatever. Different things at different times. There is no such thing as the whole runner, the whole writer, the whole human. It’s all about telling a story with what we have. Emphasising these qualities - not the ones we don’t have - is what makes us unique and gives us an edge. Run a brilliant bend, compensate for the broken foot, write your Metamorphosis.
And every day that I find respite from this weird fatigue, I will run around the hills.
