Last month, I won the Social Champion of the Year award at the Mental Health Blog Awards. But the truth is, I feel far from a champion.
No blog post for over a year and radio silence as to why. Well its because a lot has changed, namely my employment. I have been so wrapped up in the short form media of insta and Facebook I simple haven’t given the time to sit down and write. But thanks to flights and airplane mode I am all yours. So where do I begin?
26.2 miles, 42.195km, 50,000+ steps, 4,689 laps around your sofa or 46,112 yards. However you measure it the marathon distance is one of the toughest and most rewarding things you can put your body through. Ever since my first at the London Marathon back in 2016 I have been well and truly addicted to the highs and lows that sort of distance takes you on.
2022 hasn’t really gotten off to the start I had dreamed of. As of the end of April I have run four events and cancelled five; two of those should have been ultras. You can put it down to fitness, confidence or bad planning but the simple fact of it all is that my plan for the year is not unfurling as I had hoped.
Training through winter feels like its own right of passage. It is a time when your shadow, drawn long by the 4pm setting sun, is your only company in the golden cold light. You battle through storms so brutal they have names and vindictive personalities. The laundry pile of wet and muddy clothes seems to be unending and smelling worse with each passing week. The crisp frosty air robes the breath from your lungs and your steps crunch upon the hardened earth. You put on layer upon layer of clothes only to get one mile in and regret about twelve of them.
This isn’t a running post, if anything it is far more important than anything else I’ve written about on here because while my running has been all about lengthening my time on this planet and filling it with adventures in the past few months I’ve been dealing with something that has threatened to take all of that away.
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