It is Sunday afternoon and I am recovering in a café from running for an hour! Being injured for so long has made me forget how much energy running uses. I have been training consistently, and quite hard, on all the equipment in the gym, but there is something about running that somehow seems to ask more, maybe that is why I love it…
I wanted to check that I was able to run for 10k, as in 2 weeks I am going to Majorca with my friend Wendy to run a very low key 10k race. I was alos keen also to see whether I can run a little bit faster than the jogging I have been doing, which has been building up from 10 minute runs to 45 minutes on Thursday!
I went to the gym and ran a standard session I might do when fit, but slower. I warmed up for 15 minutes and then ran 8 x 3mins faster, with a jog recovery of 2 minutes. I ran the 3 minutes at 13 – 13.5k per hour and that felt fast enough!
It is safe to say that I have lost some fitness!
But that feels okay.
I was reflecting that the session felt just the same slower as when I am fit enough to run the 3 minutes at 15kph and faster. The intrinsic feeling of running and the effort was the same, (I ran to around 160HR, which is my usual threshold level, for the efforts) so the deeper experience felt the same.
If we run in a rhythm that is physiologically ideal for us, then the whole flow happens, the meditation on the move can occur and so free us. If we work ‘with’ our body and resist allowing our mind to get in the way, in a hurry to ‘get back’, to push and worry and rush, then our body will respond.
I was working with John, my yoga teacher on Friday. We were doing very very small gentle movements to encourage my holding left side to ‘come out’ to unravel, to let go of the trauma that has been locked in it for years ( likely from being kicked in the stomach by a horse aged 
and created many left side injuries.
As I ran along today, every so often I lifted my left elbow, as we had been doing on Friday – seeking to simply allow the shoulder to work to the level it needs, rather than lifting and sticking as it is wont to do. I could feel my body and mind remember the ease of the feeling and let go a little.
Running stimulates me and relaxes me deeply. It excites me like nothing else.
Of course I am okay without it – when I’m injured,I resist envying my friends who are out running free – and I find that life is good, and I am able to answer the questions others ask ‘What would you do if you couldn’t run’ – because I know who I am within, and so I adapt to not running and do something else…
But as I am let free again, I see that it is through the art of running that I truly reveal all of me without fear.
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