Back to Life…

Bump. It didn’t take long to come down to earth after the race. It took two hours to get home from deepest South West London with salt still crusted on my face, by which point the joy had somewhat worn off. By the time we ate lunch I had started to feel faint and sick and my healthy glow had turned into a greenish pallor.

The week after a race is always strange, “you must be so pleased you don’t have to run now”, people say, “put your feet up!”. After my marathon, I was and I did, but a half-marathon’s just a slightly more intense weekend run. Why would i stop running afterwards? I took a day off to recover, but that was enough.

I wanted to get to the gym tonight to stretch my muscles and check everything still worked. I haven’t been there in weeks, the weather’s been so dry. It’s good to be an occasional visitor, I find, rather than a frequent flyer. Exercising on the machines still feels like a novelty and I get excited by the toys (dumbbells! Swiss balls! Lots of other things I don’t recognise and will never use!). All the music videos are new to me too, though I see Hollyoaks is still going. Watching that programme, even without sound, makes me quite depressed. It’s so shallow, meaningless and obsessed with youth, thinness and visible underwear. Perfect for the gym.