I Still Like Going Running...
I am sitting on the terrace at Stefanos Place, the light is leaving the day; but the sun is still shining on Corfu town across the water… the buildings lit up by the late evening glow…
Anadi and I took a look at the map yesterday and decided that it looked like there was a loop that would be about eight miles…
We are both about the same level when it comes to maps and sense of direction…
But for some reason we both seemed very confident about this…
We had run along the road for an out and back eight miles on Saturday, and it looked as if we could run round in a loop…
It was a beautiful spring sunny morning… I am loving feeling so fit; it is literally like I have had a diving belt removed from around my waist, that I have been wearing for the past month…
I was reflecting this weekend on the journey back to running from my Achilles injury… In December and January we were in Thailand and I was getting ready to run; I ran easily in the UK in the frost of Buxted Park for a week, then a week here in Corfu in the rain… and then for the first month in St Lucia I was running with an intention to get fit enough to train with more focus…
For the past month I have averaged sixty six miles – carrying what (now in particular that it has gone) felt like extra resistance, extra weight - due to the high humidity…
In the 70’s my training group and I used to train all over Frensham ponds and The flashes and Hankley common.
We joined all the common land up for amazing long runs, and raced across the springy green grass of Hankley golf course too –
There is an old soldier drop zone at Hankley common, which became for us synonymous with hard hill training….!
The drop zone huts were set in the middle of a bowl, with the burnt orange sandy, steep, hills rising out of it…
Many ‘hill sessions’ were carried out here as a group… I believe it has bonded us all forever!
I also remember for a while on a Wednesday that I used to run one steep sandy hill, every mile for ten miles…
Hard core training, that even as I write it down, inspires me… :-)
And then there was the diving belt…
I remember the day my coach decided to add extra resistance to the session… He wrapped a 14lb diving belt in a towel, (to stop it hurting my hips! ) And then I ran up and down the hills with it strapped around my waist!
Running here in Corfu with cooler temperatures and low humidity is giving me the same feeling I had when unstrapping from ‘that belt’ and bounding off like a gazelle!
We ran along our beautiful road today, with the blossoms, the scenery, the sound of the bell being tolled…
The road wound up, out of the village where we turned back after four miles on Saturday… It climbed up and wound around the mountain side… up and up and then seemed to be taking us in the opposite direction to anything resembling a loop!
Anadi stopped ‘We better make a decision, we’ve run 5.5 miles and that road is going off towards the other side of the island…’
And so we turned for home… An out and back eleven miles instead of a loop…
Sometimes it seems a strange thing to have come to the planet to ‘go running’…
When I was in my twenties I used to envy musicians and actors as I saw them as people who could practice their art all of their lives, and back then I didn’t see that this would be possible for me…
I can remember too when I was in my thirties, an older friend asking me what I would do once I wasn’t running anymore – ‘Well you won’t be able to be running when you’re fifty’ she’d said…
But now, I can see a way to be running all my life… Nothing has ever compared... But then we aren’t surprised to find Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney still singing, or Angela Lansbury, Dame Judy Dench and Maggie Smith still acting...
So really there is no surprise that I still like going running…