So tonight wasn’t the run I was expecting.
I’d been feeling anxious all day, not quite myself. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and still can’t.
With it being a Monday that meant club night. I wasn’t really ‘feeling’ it but that’s not an unusual sensation before a club run so I brushed it off as relatively normal.
I have only been out once since Glasgow last weekend so I was a bit apprehensive before I set off on my warm-up run. Wanting to take it easy I found I couldn’t, which both pleased and surprised me. The rest had obviously done me good.
As usual, my plan was to do the 30s which, combined with the run there and back, would give me the guts of an hour running – quite enough for one night, especially given my notoriously difficult to settle legs.
Whilst I was nicely warmed up for the club session I began to feel my anxiety creep back in again. There was absolutely no cause for this. I was amongst friends, I was chatting and a fair few asked about my next half marathon which would complete my 18 in 18 which was lovely (this Sunday, Royal Parks, if you’re interested!).
I should have been relaxed but I wasn’t. When the session began I was running along perfectly comfortably, at conversational pace and well within my means … but that niggling anxiety just wouldn’t shift, as much as I tried to ignore it.
I knew that tonight’s route would take me very close to home before turning away to go back to the Leisure Centre. I also knew that once we got to within sight of home that I wouldn’t want to go on … and I didn’t.
If we had gone somewhere else it wouldn’t have been an issue at all, I would have completed the run and then carried on home.
Yet, tonight, I simply couldn’t go on. I was feeling on edge, although doing my absolute best to conceal it, yet the longer the run went on I felt increasingly fragile and almost sick to my stomach.
Nothing whatsoever to do with the group, nothing to do with the route, nothing to do with the actual running. It just was what it was. So I excused myself to the group leader and just turned for home. I had done half-an-hour by this stage anyway if you included the run up so, in my head, that justified it.
It’s happened before, it’ll happen again but I’m no hero or martyr. I knew I was struggling so there was no point in making myself suffer any more than was necessary.
Physically I’m fine and feeling in good shape … this other nonsense will pass soon enough, I just have to let it roll over me.
HUFF, PUFF AND SHUFFLE 