Earlier this month, I ran the London Winter Run. It was a stunningly beautiful morning, with bright blue skies. On my way there, I relayed some tragic news to friends, news that had been broken to me a couple of days previously. As I ran the Winter Run, to the sound of steel drums, choirs, a brass band, soloist Lizzie Haynes and the City of London's Sunday bell-ringing, I experienced a brief but rousing respite from my shock and grief. But I could not bring myself to write about the run in its aftermath. After my flurry of writing activity on this blog towards the end of January - and the time I spent writing those entries, time I absolutely savoured - February and most of March have passed without a word from me on here. My fundraising efforts and my logging of runs on my Garmin - runs that were fewer in number than I had planned in any case - stopped almost completely. I also skipped a fundraising event I had signed up for this month without a second thought.
This week I have been doing my best to rediscover the point of why I set out to do this. I would like to sincerely thank everyone who contributed to my fundraising in February for Cancer Research and for the Sepsis Trust, amounting to a total raised across the two charities of £120. Although I covered less mileage than I intended and struggled with willpower and an all-pervasive 'what's the point' feeling when it came to exercise, I enjoyed some beautiful walks and runs in February. I finally got round to discovering and exploring the most local park to my workplace (West Ham Park), a delightful Victorian public park on the site of what was formerly a botanic garden, with an impressive variety of well-established trees. It's become a good place to know, a welcome place to stroll around and sit in and process something so unbearably sad.
During half-term, I walked and ran on several occasions along the seafront in Deal. I love running between Kingsdown and the Cinque Port castles of Walmer, Deal and Sandown and have run along this route many times. Predictably and understandably, my trail running shoes offered less comfort than my Saucony Speed Roll trainers on the roads and pavements, but they allowed me to venture forth along different terrains beyond Sandown and towards Sandwich. So these beautiful heather-coloured Salomons have now been tried and tested on sand, shingle and stony paths, but there was no mud to be found and I must admit the shoes are still looking unnervingly pristine. All the more reason to get out in them again and soon.
Later in the month, during a visit to the in-laws, we enjoyed a stunning 7km walk in the beautiful South Downs with buzzards, skylarks and fallow deer all making an appearance. It was a truly idyllic morning.
My March target has had to change since I missed the fundraising event I had signed up for. Instead, I am focusing on my wellbeing for its own sake this month and in the run-up to my birthday in June. As well as planning to keep up with my running this month, I also signed up for a 75-day nutrition and fitness challenge requiring me to drink lots of water, eat healthily six (yes, six!) times a day, and do a kettlebell workout three times a week. This began on March 12th and so far so good. Rather than dreading the discipline of these kinds of challenges as I have often done before, I am trying to fully embrace the discipline and the routine. I am already liking the improvement in my mental health. And, as gym gear goes, kettlebells are among my favourite pieces of equipment; I'm fortunate to already possess an 8kg, a 12kg and a 16kg kettlebell due to my lockdown fitness exploits. If I'm perfectly honest, the kettlebells had been neglected and gathering dust for a few months. It's been time to dust them - and myself down - and start lifting and swinging those bells again.
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