Sidelined

It's been an incredibly hard month.

I have watched my training schedule loom, and then begin to inexorably slide past me. I have dug my heels in. I have clutched at straws. I have clawed at time with my fingernails. It has felt as if I have been clinging onto a steep rock face, trying to avoid the inevitable slide downwards, as Nick Knowles  describes my death defying attempts and the RAF rescue helicopter whirrs above me. (I may also have been watching too much daytime tv .... )

My torn achilles tendon has probably been the most constant, stable part of life. It has been the one thing that seemed not to be changing. Around the stubborn injury I changed what I could:

• My shoes - I LOVE the guys in Bath Running shop, who became even more brilliant as my physio (who practices upstairs) nipped down to explain to them my problem so that they can fix me up with absolutely the best shoes for the job. Now THAT'S service.
• My training schedule, which became all about cardio and zero about running. I grew to resent my spinning bike as I grudgingly worked out on that instead of pavement pounding.

But the calendar days flew past me, like on a bad Hitchcock movie. And still no running.

And eventually, it happened. I realised that I would not be running the Cardiff Half. I had been sidelined.

Gumph! (That's the sound of what it feels like to be punched in the stomach which is what  finally facing up to the truth felt like).

I had thrown so much emotionally into signing up for this race, my running was able to bring me a sense of some control in the snowballing world of Mum's cancer diagnosis. Letting go of the race meant letting go of some of that control and was, well, a bit panic inducing if I'm honest.

So, my fellow running freaks, I am standing on the sidelines. I am cheering you on. But I will save my loudest cheers for each one of you who is running for a cause. And I'm not talking charity. I'm talking about the other causes -   running to forget. Or running to gain some control. Or running in memory of someone you love.

Run like the wind.

And I'll see you next year.

x