Run Free

The sun is just coming up, its rich orange hues warming the earth around me and waking the world from its slumber. As I run down the trail I pass by a fence, the low light creating a strobe effect as I move past it like running through a giant barcode.
The path is nothing special, just one of my regular routes by the river but at this moment in time there is nowhere I would rather be and nothing else I would rather be doing. I feel alive, brimming with energy, I feel free.

How did I ever manage without running?

Enjoying the run at Swansea Half Marathon Last year

It’s something that has taken over my life, dominating my thoughts and actions but as a kid I was never really interested. I never saw running as a sport in its own right. In my rather short sighted view it was a training method, body conditioning that allowed you to improve your ability and endurance when playing proper sports such as tennis, football and cricket. A proper sport involved not only physical ability and athleticism but hand eye coordination and skill. Running lacked the hand eye coordination so in my mind it was downgraded to a training tool.

It’s not that I didn’t run, I spent most of my life doing it, but it was always to chase a ball of some sort. Running was just an element of the sports that I enjoyed so much. To run on your own just for the sake of running seemed a bit boring and pointless if there wasn’t a ball at the final destination.

I did go to a couple of races and run for the school, I remember one race, a cross country scramble up and down a local hillside where I finished fourth, just off the podium and so close to the lemonade that was masquerading as Champagne. Cross country wasn’t so bad, we had set up a club at school and I enjoyed the jaunt through the fields and around the country lanes but I think the chance to get covered in mud was probably my main motivation for doing it. Running and the few races I entered were just sideshows to my favourite sports, run on days when there was no football/rugby/cricket/tennis/basketball to be played. It was something different to fill the gap, to keep me active in-between playing real sports.

School sports day, a rare day of running without a ball involved. I am second on the left of the picture behind my childhood nemesis Gareth Hill

I had no idea how bigger part running would play later on in my life.

Years later I needed the sport, It was my last resort in the ongoing fight against the M.E. I still didn’t see running as a fully fledged sport though. To me it was a process, a tool that I could use to try and help get myself out of the slump I was in and try to regain some sort of control. It was me vs the M.E and running was my chosen weapon.

There were so many reasons why it had to be running

To start with it was the easiest way to get fit. In the same beautifully simple way that to play football you just need a ball or even just a tin can, to run all I needed was a pair of trainers. I could do it anywhere and any time, fitting the sport around my life and my illness. There was no expensive kit to buy, no facilities I had to travel to or pay for. There was no team expecting me to play each and every week. No one to let down if I was too tired and couldn’t make it. It was just me and the shoes. I could go out on my own doing things in my time, letting only myself down if things went wrong. I was in control.

In fact the more I think about it the more running is the perfect sport for me and my M.E.

If I'm feeling bad the run can be shorter, or slower. On better days I can go further and faster, it all depends on how I feel at that moment in time and what my body can manage.
What I have come to realise is that I was really wrong in my early views about running. It is one of the most natural and pure sports that we have. If you so wish there are no rules and regulations, just you, your feet and a desire to do what ever you want. It’s the best game in the world, one that changes every time I go out, providing me with new feelings and experiences. Each run gives me new ways to find out more about myself and what I can do. 

When I run, I can play with the ground beneath me, challenging the continually changing vistas that appear from over the horizon. I skip from surface to surface, running on tarmac, grass, sand, gravel, each of them offering different experiences and challenges. No run is ever the same. Sometimes I dance round puddles other days I drive straight through them, sometimes (although it’s rare in Wales) those puddles aren’t even there. It's one big constantly varying game with the whole world as my pitch and where there are no rules or referee. I can use whichever part of the pitch I please and do whatever I want. I am the controller of the world around me.

It took time to see running like this though to see it as this game, as this wonderfully free sport. To start with it really did feel like taking medicine. It was not a pleasant process, but I had to get through it to try and beat the M.E.
Six months in and I started to feel a bit of the magic of what running could offer. I was enjoying the sensations it gave me.

So now I run most days and you know what it feels pretty damn good. There's an energy it gives me, a high, an adrenaline rush that keeps me going, it gives me just enough to lift the fog of tiredness and escape it's clutches for a few hours at least. I guess you could say I'm trying to outrun the illness, in my mind the more I run the further it takes me away from the M.E and those days where I could barley even speak without it being an effort. Sometimes I look back at where I was, and the sofa that had become my world. I managed to escape and run free, leaving that isolated life behind. Now each time I run I feel like the luckiest man alive. Whilst I am out running I no longer have M.E, I am just me again.

Todays playground of choice - Caerphilly Castle

Here is a link to my just giving page, raising money for Action for M.E.

https://www.justgiving.com/M-e-myself-run
Please give what you can to a very worthy cause.

And now for something completely different

We are going the wrong way. No matter what we try we can't get this kayak to turn left and go around the supposedly simple course set up on the lake. We've definitely got a faulty kayak, it’s the equivalent of a dodgy supermarket trolley, the one that looks ok outside the store but spends the whole of your shop trying to drive you into the neatly stacked pyramids of cut price baked beans.
Yes that's it this kayak is definitely broken, it's been set up to only turn right. At best we are probably going to beach it on the island that is coming up to meet us faster than we would like.

After much splashing, shouting and stabbing at the water with paddles, we realise that it's us who is faulty, the kayak is in perfect working order. We discover that while it will go left, keeping it straight is another matter entirely. The Strava map of this paddle is going to look like a three year olds drawing of a dinosaur.

To be honest I'm just quite happy we haven't taken a cold plunge in the lake yet. I didn't tell my team mate this but kayaking and me don't seem to get on, it was the part of the race that was always going to go a bit wrong. Last time I was in a kayak, I was still going round in right hand circles but it was in the much more pleasant climate of Crete and crystal clear waters that almost invited you to fall in. That day after a bit of paddling around I started to feel sea sick, on a kayak, that's how much the sport didn't agree with me. It was a sunny calm day as well, hardly The Perfect Storm. Margam on this rainy morning was trying its best to recreate the elements that George Clooney and his mates battled through in the film but on a small boating lake, we weren't in any danger, from the conditions at least. The biggest danger came from ourselves.

At least we are now going in the right direction, it's hardly the university boat race but we have now got out paddling stokes in time, maybe we could be alright at this... That illusion is shattered when we have to make a right hand turn and the kayak now only wants to turn left. Like a stubborn puppy it just does the opposite of what we want.

After the Half Marathon last week and the (self imposed) pressure of going for a PB this race is a bit of light relief, it's something new, an adventure racing taster. It’s never going to test the limits of my stamina and endurance but that’s not the point of today. It’s just a bit of fun. I can let my inner kid out, the one who judge’s sport by how much mud is involved. Today in the wind and the rain, this race has to rank pretty highly, even getting out the transition area means a wade through what is quickly becoming a bog. My ten year old self would quickly declare this the best sport ever, my twenty nine and three quarter year old self is really kind of enjoying it too.

So much mud. This is the race HQ.

Eventually we make it round the two laps of the really not that big lake, one of the instructors takes pity on us and wades out to intercept our rather drunken looking trajectory and drag us back to the bank. It’s a helpless feeling being pulled those last few feet but at least it means we avoided hitting the end of the jetty.

Off to the bikes, I know how to mountain bike, we will be much safer on the bikes. I spoke to soon. The freedom of being back on dry land has gone to our heads and we pedal like men possessed down the hill into the first corner. What we forgot is that the water logged course now resembles the boating lake and the kayak would now probably be the preferred mode of transport. Predictably we almost skid straight on and into the town of Port Talbot. It is more down to luck that we stay upright. No it seems that we (and possibly and others within range) are definitely not safer on the bikes.

The bikes dry off in the sun which decided to come out once we were finished

The Garmin training plan, the one I have been loosely sticking too when it suits me says today called for two runs, a recovery run the morning and a hill session in the afternoon. This though is much more fun, after the seriousness of last week I needed a bit of light relief, a break from the relentless miles of the marathon training. This week was always going to be a rest week. I needed to take a bit of time and recharge the batteries ready for the final two months of slog before Liverpool. Since the start of January all I've been thinking about is the marathon. Pace, mileage, cadence, heart rates and other serious running matters have dominated my thoughts. For a couple of hours on a rainy morning in Wales I can forget all that. All of my concentration is now taken up with trying to stop my face meeting the ground as I speed down paths that resemble riverbeds.

So I haven’t been able to completely get away from running, the start of the race was a short trail run around the park before the kayaking but it felt good running without thinking about the plan and the endless timing and stats that it brings.
Eventually after many more near crashes, a few wrong turns and the discovery that contact lenses, mud and mountain biking don't mix we make the finish in one piece.

Tomorrow I've got a long run in the schedule as the training picks up before the Marathon but this has been the break I needed. We also ended up with a big shiny trophy after winning our category. Lets face it any day is good if you end up with some silverware. The thing I probably shouldn't mention it that we only had to beat one other entry in our category. It's a shame that so few people entered as the day was an absolute blast. My adventure race taste buds have been well and truly wetted. I may even come back and try the event that is planned for Cardiff in September. As long as there is lots of mud and we get a kayak that works this time then I’m there.

We Won!!! Thanks to my team mate Stewart Harding for telling me about the race

Here is a link to my just giving page, raising money for Action for M.E.

https://www.justgiving.com/M-e-myself-run
Please give what you can to a very worthy cause.

If anyone is interested in similar races here's the Burn series website

http://www.burnseries.co.uk/