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I think I’m a fairly fit person, but I have a real angsty relationship with exercise – running in particular. I don’t do organised sport or team sports.
Growing up, I’d barely do anything – I’d park myself in front of the Nintendo and not move until dinner. It wasn’t until I left home at just before I turned 18 that I started to move – I began to walk, and then to run. In my early 20s, I would jog 7km a day. At the time I was living the dream life (ah, to know it then), completing University (which, let’s face it, doesn’t require a lot of time) and working nights. I’d sleep in in the morning and generally had a pretty cruisy existence. There was an abundance of time to jog – and it was easy, living in a flat area next to a path I’d put my shoes on and just head out the door. Eventually though, I must have overdid it – because I stuffed up my knee and had to stop – and, like all good routines, they die when you stop.
And, let’s face it – life changes, and so did my relationship with exercise. I ended up moving to a colder climate and taking up my first full time job. Trying to get balance in life was hard, but eventually I found myself running again, but I found walking enjoyable too. I lived in a place in Australia called Bathurst, which is home to quite a famous race track, Mount Panorama. The word ‘Mount’ is important to this tale, but one of the things the locals would do, is go around the mountain on foot, and I loved this. Being a race track, whenever I’d pass someone, I’d do the ‘overtaking’ commentary. I was getting close to being able to run the entire track, I just had to connect the steepest part of the mountain to the rest of the run – but it was my goal. (Seriously though, the mountain steepness was an absolute pain, walking up this section, people will wheeze and find it hard to catch their breath – and because it goes on for so long, it sucks).
But, it was a goal unmet. I had married my wife, and we decided on a sea change, so we moved to the coast. In a new marriage, we had to sort out our routines again, and we opted to do a lot of walking – and, as things happen, the running stopped. And then started up, and then stopped. And over the past couple of years, I keep going through this pattern. Stop / Start / Stop / Start. In between though, we’d always walk every night – it was a solid routine, and if we missed a night, our dog Puddy would give us the sad eyes and we’d be guilted into going. We’ve had some shocker outings, trying to hold his leash and an umbrella with rain soaking us through! Bloody dog!
And then at the end of 2019, we moved locally to a different suburb, going from flat to the most hills you’ve ever seen in your life! Our house is on top of a hill; I remember telling the real estate agent, ‘Nah, we can’t buy this house, we walk a lot and it’d be shit having to get up this hill every day’ – then we looked through it and made an offer on the spot (perhaps the opposition of the legs was not voiced loudly enough, or perhaps it was a dumb reason to perhaps not buy it in the first place). This decision has certainly led to an increase in fitness, you can’t walk up and down massive hills every day without being able to do it easier and easier, right? We walk a lot – about 3km every afternoon, and 5km on the weekends – unless we do a beach walk, which is a little bit longer. I rather like the beach walks because it’s flat! But, alas! I can’t run in my area, I’ve tried getting routines up a few times, but my knees hurt after a few runs and I give up.
Then in 2021 I put in place a new plan, to drive for 7 minutes to the flat area where there is a nice path. And that’s where I think I gained my highest levels of fitness – after running on/off for 16 years – I dunno what happened, but things clicked into place and I moved from doing 5km runs, to 7km, to 9km, to 10km, to 12km. And I was finding it easier than ever before – barely puffing on the long runs, and, on the short runs, going for speed. And then Winter coldness made it impossible to go in the mornings, and then COVID and then the routine died again. It was a beautiful spot to jog though, you would go up an inlet from the beach, which meant into a water system – on one memorable occasion, I was jogging – and next to me in the water was a dolphin who kept popping out of the water – it went on for a few minutes.
So it’s now late 2022, and over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been back trying the running thing again. It’s going OK, I’ve done a few longer runs, but it’s colder than it should be at this time of the year, and if it’s cold, I’m not going out. That said, I also made the choice not to run for 2 weeks, as I think I was overdoing it and my legs were feeling exhausted and heavy. The challenge in the weeks ahead (it’s Spring in Australia) is to keep going, embrace the coming warmth and to try and really get this routine built. My guess is, at some point, it will fail again.
So there you have it, my angsty relationship with running. I think I can conclude I’ll always be a walker, and while I have running goals, I also think I’ll always have a struggle with running – I love the feeling of jogging and meeting the very early morning on a run, and I love how I feel after I finish the run – but motivation isn’t easy, particularly when I keep finding good excuses not to head out!