Remind me again why I run?

Since May, we’ve been diligently running with the club twice a week with a longer run most weekends. And what do I have to show for it? Sweet F-A! For the past few weeks my running experiences have been steadily declining. I default to my asthma pump at least once per run, I often find myself doubled over, retching with the dreaded ‘vomit-cough’ and all this so I can fail miserably at trying to keep up with Carmen, Chet and Gareth.

I consider turning back about a thousand times a minute and often end up having to cut short, or I get home so late I’m in a flat spin trying to get ready to leave for work on time (and generally failing). I find myself repeating the phrase, “you guys go on ahead, I’m fine really,” hundreds of times a week. I plead for them to leave me behind, because I hate the fact that I’m holding them back, but they don’t – they won’t. All this just leaves me feeling even worse about the whole situation.

Today was the rotten cherry atop this cake of crushed dreams and broken spirits. Less than 2kms into what was supposed to be an “easy 10km”, I was heaving and spluttering, praying for death (or at least a serious fall that would warrant turning back to the club). After begging Gareth and Carmen to carry on and just let me turn back on my own to no avail, I dragged my laboring lungs on for another 3kms before we decided to cut short and loop back to the club. On inspection of my Garmin Connect data, I discovered that I was actually quite close to death a few times on the run, most notably when my heart rate touched 211bpm. Yes folks, you read that right – 211bpm! Or as I like to call it 112% of my maximum heart rate. My average heart rate was a cool 87% of max and according to Garmin’s Aerobic Training Effect scale, the run was 5 out of 5, meaning I was “overreaching” . And all this for a 7km run at almost 7 minutes per kilometer. Great.

I was meant to start quality training with Jeanine next week, but after this morning, I’m so completely terrified of tying my laces ever again, that I’ve decided to take a few weeks “off” from chasing Carmen, Chet and Gareth, and run with the Fledgelings. I’ll build up to a nice slow Old Eds 21km in a month’s time and then reconsider my options. Hopefully by then, I’ll be stronger – mentally and physically.

I hate running

It’s official: I hate running. Honestly, it’s kak. What is good about running?

• You pay thousands of Rands for shoes that still hurt you and only last 3 months
• You pay thousands of Rands for a watch that doesn’t even have an alarm clock but instead tells you that you’re going too slowly and reminds you how far you still have to go
• You pay hundreds of Rands a month to enter into races, during which you deliberately hurt yourself for up to 12 hours at a time (if you’re brave (stupid) enough to be running Comrades)
• You pay thousands of Rands a year to belong to a club just so that you can feel a sense of togetherness with a bunch of equally mentally deficient people who are also punishing themselves on a near-daily basis
• You get up at stupid-o’clock 4 or 5 mornings a week, including weekends to punish your body
• You punish your body almost daily. And I mean seriously punish yourself – what did you ever do to yourself to deserve running up a really shitty hill, and then running back down, and then running back up, and then running back down, and back up, and back down, and back up and back down, all the while wishing you were dead or at least at home in your nice warm bed? I ask you with tears in my baby blues!
• Generally, you go in a bloody big, squiggly circle and end up where you started, so it’s not even like you can say, “oh well, at least I’m getting somewhere” because you’re bloody not!
• You run in freezing cold weather, laying up with every item of reflective clothing you own and you’re still cold, until you’ve been running for 20 minutes, then you start getting hot and systematically stripping off layer after layer so that by the time you get back to your car you’re carrying about 20 items of clothing
• You run in sweltering weather, wearing as little as possible without exposing too much of your flesh to the rest of your flesh thereby causing the most horrific chaffing
• You run in rain – in fact on race days, you pray for a little bit of a light drizzle – your shoes become small, mobile dams giving you the most incredibly imaginative blisters, your cap becomes the precipice of a waterfall, streaming torrents into your eyes, you clothing sticks to your skin in the most flattering of ways and by the time you finish you’re freezing, but you’re boiling, you try to get dry but all you succeed in getting is sick
• You run and run and run, for what? A five minute sense of achievement when you finish? To have abuse hurled at you by pissed off motorists who don’t like sharing their roads? To get fit? To get over a break-up? To meet new people? For what?

Today, I honestly hate running. I’m tired, my back hurts, my knees hurt, my calves hurt, my quads burn when I walk up stairs, I can’t sit for too long without getting uncomfortable or achy, I can’t stand for too long without my feet hurting – my feet bloody hurt, all the bloody time! And you know what the worst damn thing is about running? The fact that I’ll get up again at 04:30 tomorrow morning and do it all over again.

Honestly, the only good thing about running is that you are, not only allowed to, but encourage to drink a beer at 08:00 in the morning after a race. I only wish the encouragement applied to weekday mornings too.

PnP Marathon: an ode to South African drivers

I’m sure anyone who has ever gone out running, whether early in the morning, in the middle of the day or late in the evening, can attest to the lack of courtesy and decency among South African drivers. In fact, if you’ve ever been on a road in South Africa, I’m sure you can agree that South African drivers are by and large a bunch of selfish road hogs who don’t have enough common decency to so much as raise a finger in acknowledgement of their fellow human beings – unless it’s the middle finger, everyone’s pretty good at raising that one. As a runner I’ve been exposed to all manner of assholes on the roads – from the kamikaze grannies who aim their Hundai half loaves at you with sniper like precision to the careless taxi driver more focused on finding his next fare than the reflector-clad, luminous shirt wearing weirdo diving into the bushes as he passes, and every other kind of sadistic vehicular manslaughter-attempting twat in between. But I have never experienced less considerate people than the good people of Edenvale as they headed to and from their respective churches on Sunday morning between 07:00 and 09:00.

Jeppe Quondam Athletics Club is the proud organising club of the Pick ‘n Pay Marathon and Half Marathon and each year, race organiser round up all the club members to assist with various activities on the day and in the build-up to the event. Becs, Hilary and I were assigned to marshal duty and were each allocated an intersection along the route (Jeanine, the lazy bum, faked having to work the weekend to get out of helping). After our 22km on Saturday, which passed without incident worth comment, we donned our reflective vests, took up our flags and headed to our respective intersections. By 07:00 I’d almost been run over 3 times by “Christians” on their way to church, some of whom had proceeded to swear out their windows and rudely gesture in the general direction of the runners in general, and more specifically, me. A few of them were treated to a particularly violent flick of my marshal flag as I attempted to illustrate to them just how close they’d come to forcing me into the next life. By the time we left our posts, having completed our tasks, at about 10:00 both Becs and I had each been the victims of at least 4 separate hit-and-run attempts (and that’s just on a 200m stretch of road, a small fraction of the 21km loop), I had hit at least one car with my marshal flag and shouted some encouragement to “go forth and multiply” to a number of other maniacs.

What the hell is wrong with people that they can’t be considerate of others? Why can’t you a-holes share your road for a few hours a week? And don’t give me any of that “roads were made for cars” bull shit either; a quick look back in history would illustrate that roads (as they were) were originally made for people, and then horses, and then bicycles, and then cars/busses/trucks, etc. You people who aren’t willing to share your precious tarred surfaces for a few hours out of your supposedly Christian lives were obviously really good at sharing your toys when you were younger too. My wish for all of you is erectile disfunction/vaginal apathy (delete as appropriate), I only hope that you will never have to experience the devastation of actually hitting someone or – gods forbid – the horror of losing a family member to an equally idiotic driver.

Rant over. Happy Monday.

Countdown to Dischem 21.1km

With just 2 days to go until Becs runs her first 21.1km, Hilary runs her first since October (after a long injury induced absence), and Jeanine and I do our first race since Tough One, the nerves are starting to show. Becs occasionally breaks down into panicked repeats of, “I’ll be fine right? Ja, I’m sure I’ll be fine. I will be, hey?” And she really will. She’s done the work, she’s eased back from injury and I have no doubt she’ll be completely fine. All she has to remember is not to push herself too early in the race, and not to get sucked in to trying to keep up with other people who are doing that. She’s reluctant to run with a watch, and I can understand why, but I’d be inclined to run with one just to keep everyone reigned in when the excitement and adrenaline of the start begin to pull them into the wild horse mindset.

Jeanine and I ran on Thursday, doing the 3 X 3km progressive route that I did with Murray in December and it was one of the kakkest runs I’ve had since I started running. The first 2 or 3 kms are always tough, as my legs slowly wake up and my various aches and pains flare and fade, but usually by 4kms in I’m feeling stronger, more comfortable. And I generally feel that way until about 15kms and then I start to niggle as the aches begin to creep back into my field of consciousness. But on Thursday I felt horrid the whole way – I struggled to breathe, my legs where tired, not sore or achey, just tired. I felt like I was running up the steepest incline when I was on a flat. I counted the seconds between downhills, which provided little-to-no relief. I just felt flat.

I know every runner has good days and bad days and Thursday was clearly a bad day for me, I just hope Sunday is a better one. Not because I’m shooting for a PB or anything like that, just because I’m not up for feeling like kak for 21 kilometres and arguing with my body for two-and-a-half hours.

Back on the road

Today marked the official start of Jeppe’s Two Oceans/Comrades training programme and there are clearly a lot of people crawling out of the Christmas woodwork. Arriving at the club at 04:50 to a packed parking lot, we met up with our various school to set off on Theo Jackson, for Hil and Becs, and Greg’s “brisk 10km route that includes the start of Dischem” for me. Jeanine, who is still living it up in Southbroom (and by the sounds of things not running) was, obviously not there, but she is apparently running Dischem on Sunday and will, in all likelihood, kick our asses.

About a kilometre into the route, coming down Riley Road, I caught the awkward edge of a pothole (thanks City of Ekurhuleni for the wonderful maintenance of our roads) and rolled my ankle. I bounced up again and proceeded to hop around like some kind of drunk flamingo until I was brave enough to test putting my foot down. Ward Counsellor, Jill Humphreys can expect a strongly worded letter regarding the shoddy state of Bedfordview’s roads, unfortunately for her I was running with my lawyer at the time, so you know, “hier kom kak!” as they say in the classics. Anyway, back to the point. To the credit of the B-School captains, both Greg and Pete came back to check I was OK and helped me to get going again, as did Taryn who, as I mentioned, I was running with at the time. I carried on through the rest of the route without any further incident, but it’s nice and sore now.

In hindsight, I should really have seen this coming. You know when you have one of those days when you just should’ve stayed in bed? Well, today was that day. Every single robot between our house and the club was red, as if they were conspiring with the gods, trying to tell us to go home. Then I fell, nearly choked on water at the water point, got home and felt disgustingly nauseous (followed not long thereafter by monster stomach cramps), and (to top it all off) there was a bad drivers’ convention in Johannesburg today and they seemed to be congregating on my route to the office.

Anyway, my rant is now done and I am ready to commence with the good news: I remembered my watch – hooray! I’m not going to upload everything from December again, but I’ll give you today’s run. Tomorrow we do “an easy 10km” followed by a “3 X 3km building route” on Thursday, Friday and Saturday rest and Sunday Dischem, Becs’s first 21.1km and Hilary’s first one back after a long absence (partially due to injury but mostly due to excessive jolling).

I now know why runners are angry

I’ve often heard it said that runners are generally angry, or at least grumpy, people. And honestly, who could blame them? Getting up at 04:20 every morning to deliberately hurt yourself in the freezing cold and then to still have to go to work for 8 hours – it’s a kak idea. But today, I really understood why. Today, I hated running. My alarm went off as usual at 04:15 and I snoozed it a few times before begrudgingly – no actually, it was more than begrudgingly, it was more like loathsomely, yes. I loathsomely got out of my nice warm bed where I was happily dreaming of building tree houses (don’t try and understand it, I don’t), donned my dressing gown and stomped to the laundry to retrieve my running kit. While I was doing that, Becs was testing out her Mae Ankle, which seems to have flared again only to find out that it’s actually too sore to chance a run. I got dressed with the biggest frown furrowing my brow, kissed Becs on the forehead and left to go and meet Hilary.

With every step it became more clear that today would not be my day. I hadn’t been able to find my ear-warmer-guy or my buff so I was cold. I have developed an affliction similar to Carmen Toe only it’s more like Carmen Foot and my left leg is wound tighter than a watch spring. My legs were tired, I have stupid change-of-season-sinuses and I was generally miserable. Hilary and I ran 7kms in virtual silence, breaking it occasionally to swap stories of how tired or over the run we were, as well as a couple of other mundane facts from our days. Generally speaking, I was a miserable sod from footfall #1.

I got home and my mood didn’t really improve much either. I was cold, tired and hungry. I wanted to stay at home and pout. But here I am, sitting at my desk (mostly) ready to face the day. Hopefully it will improve and tomorrow will be better. Special thanks to Hilary for putting up with my grumbling for 46 minutes.