Saturday, May 1, 2010

Too Much Too Young...

I should be running, but instead I'm writing. I haven't been running for two weeks now, because I got a little bit over excited.

I started to build up quite a good routine of jogging at lunch time, covering about 4 kilometers. These runs were done along Wellington's amazing waterfront and, along with plenty sunny weather, the setting really motivated me to put the leg work in. That said, New Zealand's ferocious sun is a killer when you're used to running at dusk and in the dark and I always longed for shade. There's also no shortage of other runners, some faster, some slower, mostly faster. These other runners should motivate me but they only really make me feel slow. Talking to Brett, our HR guy at work, who was a professional athlete in a previous life and a man of brutal self motivation, he was saying how much he likes to smile at other runners, because it messes with their heads. He also reminded me that no one knows where you began your run, so for all they know you've been running for the past hour and covered a significant distance.

But it wasn't the running that forced me to rest up for two weeks, it was my other forum for extreme slowness that generated the problem. I am a super slow swimmer and always feel inferior when covering distance in water but I love the open air pool in Thorndon. It's probably my favourite place in the whole city. My speed impediment isn't helped by my penchant for dong the breaststroke, the slowest of all the strokes. Alas, this is a summer pool and, at these latitudes, that season is technically over. With only a few weeks to go before the pool closed I went into overdrive on visits, gorging on its outdoorsy goodness. And each time I went I had the sensation of increased riving in my poor left knee, like it the whole joint was getting looser. If I had a good technique or did the freestyle like sensible folk I probably wouldn't have a problem. Or, I could have stopped swimming, but as I said, its season was coming to a close.

The swimming also had another angle of awkwardness. Sometimes swimming and running on the same day I couldn't be bothered to lug too much stuff to work each day. So I started using the same shorts for both activities. One day I went out running before the shorts were dry - it was sunny and breezy, I knew they'd dry out pretty quickly. Hmmm... not quickly enough. They were chafe-o-matic, rubbing away the hairs and skin on the inside of my leg and making me look weird as they knotted up under my crotch. Despite constant manual intervention, it only took seconds for the knot to reform time and time again. At work everyone found these shorts deeply amusing, which I did expect. I once wore them to the shop and someone asked me if I was too hot - I think he thought I'd stripped down to my boxer shorts. They have that kind of look.

Oddly, the biggest effect of not running has been increased tension in my shoulders. I've always suffered from headaches but I think they must originate in my shoulders and neck and running shakes that tension out. I now have a headache, for the fourth day in a row, so I think it's time to start running once more.