Lament to lost activities: running

Alternative title: Running out of ideas

This is my penultimate entry to life.turns from the garden studio. Actually this is not a lament, as I hate running, and wouldn't care if I never went running again. Yes, I am running out of ideas as to what to include to get my full zoetrope, and this is clearly the most visually dull image of them all that will attract a minimum of interest from blippers. You can't even see the "Run with the Dog" text on the back of my T shirt.

I was in the school cross-country harriers team, not by virtue of my ability, but because I was one of the few boys who were deemed to have no talent for rugby. In a school in South Wales being useless at rugby was quite a burden to carry. I tried hard at running, and the pinnacle of my running career was being placed 100th in the Glamorgan Championships. But I never really enjoyed it. Runners rarely do look like they are having a good time, it seems a pretty grim business, something that people have to do to get and stay fit. Give me a good mountain to walk up any day rather than go for some dismal pounding of the pavements and dodging cars in the country lanes.

Since school I have had the occasional period when I thought running would be good for me. The latest was about 5 years ago. I fancied entering the Yorkshire Wolds half-marathon, generally reckoned to be one of the toughest races in the East Yorkshire programme. There was something heroic about running this particular race that appealed to me. The race is held on the day of the Bishop Wilton Village show, this is Wifie's home village, and the show is held on the land of my farming in-laws. I fancied my nephews and in-laws would be impressed to see me complete this daunting challenge. I also wanted to do it for Uncle Henry, who had been Honorary Vice-President of the show, and had recently passed away. It all seemed quite fitting somehow. I had some nice days out with my father-in-law studying the course while he told me about his childhood and early days in farming.

I bought some new running kit and spent a couple of months training. I didn't do the race though. First my knees started playing up, and after each training run it would be several days before they stopped aching and I could go and aggravate them all over again. The clincher though was when my heart started misfiring, this is something that happens every now and again, the engine itself is sound, but the electrics do play up sometimes. It was an honourable discharge from the race and from my running career. Strange though, that at the show this year, the yearning to do the race came back. Why?

That's enough about running. I have one more life.turns to do (although last night's hasn't been loaded onto the life.turns site for some reason). I shall be away from home tomorrow night, so will need to do my final blip tomorrow morning very early.

Please see my earlier entries if you haven't already:

Diving Rock climbingMothingMountain biking Caving Mountaineering

Afternote: I actually had quite an interesting day to day, snorkelling in Red Tarn on Helvellyn. It was raining hard so I didn't take many pictures, but there were a few that might have been more interesting than the one above. See link