Be

Friday 23rd July 2010

Following Katie Bertie’s advice to do a “shorter but faster” training run after my 7.3 miles on Tuesday, I hot-footed it to the gym determined to run 5 miles as fast as I possibly could.

I am averaging 10 minutes per mile at the moment, which is perfectly acceptable for a relative beginner like me (so the internet and Katie Bertie tell me!). But six months from now, I’m hoping it will be a different story - so today my aim was to run 5 miles in less than 50 minutes.

I decided to leave off the headphones so that 1) I could really focus on my speed with no distractions and 2) I could run without the physical restriction of the wires and iPhone – I thought this might help my speed too.

Big mistake. Huge. (By the way, that’s favourite line from the film Pretty Woman!)

I’ll tell you why it was a mistake. My son Zachary who (as my regular readers will know) is severely autistic, also suffers from a condition called Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), which affects the way his brain processes the information it receives from his senses. This mainly affects his vision, hearing, tactile sense and balance, to the extent that certain environments (e.g. with particular lights, noises and sensory stimuli), can completely overwhelm him and cause him physical pain. In these situations he is happiest and most comfortable in his wheelchair, with his eyes closed and fingers in his ears, or headphones on, to block out everything that is hurting him.

Anyway, I got a real taste of how Zac’s SPD must feel sometimes, when I tried treadmill running with no headphones. After about 10 minutes I began to feel sick, dizzy and overwhelmed by all of the following: 8 huge TV screens on the wall in front of me, the constant piped music on the gym’s sound system, the array of bright spotlights above my head, the pounding of the other runners’ feet on the treadmills around me, and the muffled yelling of the instructor leading the Spinning class in the studio behind me. All of these sights and sounds around me combined to overwhelm my senses, and I wanted to stop and put my headphones on to block it all out, but as I was aiming to improve my speed, I really didn’t want to sacrifice valuable minutes doing so.

So I pressed on trying to focus on speed. I slowed to a fast walking pace a couple of times to grab a sip of water and check my heart-rate, and sped up several times to run an extra-fast minute when I felt able to.

With no music or podcast to distract me, all kinds of random thoughts went through my head as I ran and, just for fun(!), I will share some of my musings with you:

1) Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl came on the sound system at one point, and I wasted at least 2 minutes trying to think of some new lyrics to make the “cherry chapstick” line rhyme with “Terry Pratchett”!!! It has to be do-able, but I couldn’t do it! Maybe some of my songwriting friends can come up with something – I’ll let you know in a future post if they do!

2) I never watch darts and know absolutely nothing about it, but there was a darts game on one of the TV screens and I noticed that all the players seemed to have an appalling sense of style – from weirdy-beards to straggly ponytails and horrendously ill-fitting clothes. I’m all for freedom of expression, but this struck me as almost some kind of dress-code. Do you have to have bad style to play darts, or was it just a co-incidence?

3) Looking around me I couldn’t help but notice that some ladies had underestimated the importance of a (preferably industrial-strength) sports bra when running… take note fellow treadmillers – 20 years from now you may regret it!

4) There was a news story on one of the screens about kangaroos being shot for their meat in the Australian bush, and the slant of the story seemed to be that this was particularly shocking because kangaroos are so cute and cuddly. Hmm. I have been a vegetarian since I was 16 and am always surprised when non-vegetarians are shocked at the killing and consumption of cute animals. I don’t see why this is anymore shocking than killing, say, a chicken. Well, I’m not going to get preachy (even if this is my blog!), but I did think it was odd.

Anyway, after what felt like an eternity, I completed the 5 miles in… 46.44 minutes. A new record for me and an average of 9.17 minutes per mile. I was pretty happy with this, but totally exhausted.

After the run, I stretched, then moved to the mats to do my 200 sit-ups. I always do this after a gym run, and try to do 200 sit-ups every day at home too. (When you’ve had 3 children, you have to work extra hard for firm abs – but it definitely pays off!)

Next to me on the mats was a lady doing the most amazing yoga positions. I’m guessing she was in her mid 50s, and she was extremely flexible and graceful. We got chatting and I asked if she’d mind if I took a photo of her for my blog, and here it is! And her name?

"Be".


Distance run (in miles): 5.0
Total mileage this week: 18.5
Total mileage for July: 62.3
Total since starting blog (20/6/10): 112.3