After nearly three months of unrelenting slovenliness (less abrasive self-critics might term it "resting an injury"), I have finally got back into a regular running habit these last few days.
I am slow, oh so slow. My legs are stiff. And I am involuntarily breaking down into a walk every 15 or 20 minutes (worrying: serious stamina issues!). But, on the whole, it's feeling pretty good.
This morning, I managed to head out early, only a little after 7am - when my usual figure-8 circuit around the Houhai/Qianhai lakes is mercifully uncrowded. Well, there are still quite significant gaggles of people: city maintenance workers doing their early chores, local residents having breakfast on the street, children on their way to school, etc. But NO tourists. Bliss. I must try to start doing this every day again.
I feel a little calmer, a little saner already. I don't know how I've survived without this for so long.
2 comments:
I've actually wondered about this recently -- whether you'd ever returned to running; didn't you take a tumble within the last few months, on broken sidewalk or something? (I've looked but can't find the post I'm thinking of. Had something to do with getting on in years, I think, which actually made me laugh you whippersnapper you.) Glad to hear it didn't put you off indefinitely. I know it had to have been distracting you, even when not actively thinking about it.
I think you may be conflating two (or more) stories there, JES. (What a surprise, for a weaver of tales like yourself!)
I had a nasty tumble while running in the States last summer. A couple of weeks ago I bashed a hole in my shin by tripping over a steel parking bollard here in Beijing. Both caused me a bit of lower-limb distress, but didn't prohibit running.
A few months back, in some despair at a long-term knee injury and general decline in stamina, I wondered whether I would have to give up running altogether, after it had been a central part of my life for some 25 years.
But now I'm back. Sort of. Touch wood.
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