In This Dark Place,

I was watching a video that an old friend made, and she said she preferred making videos to writing, because to her it's a more natural form of communication. I thought I would give it a crack, what with the fact that writing hasn't been coming naturally recently, but then I don't know anywhere near enough about editing to be able to put subtitles on the whole of it, in case people are hard of hearing/deaf or edit out the bits where I say erm a lot and other stupid things, so the upshot was that I decided not to post it, and all of the things I wanted to communicate are still floating around like fluffy little clouds in my brain. Yay.

It's always been possible for writing to take me to dark places, but more often than not, it's the shovel with which I dig myself out of them, which is one of the big reasons I'm going to try and get back into it as best I can. 

One of the things that is adding to my current dark place is the fact I can hardly flipping run. 

Whilst in San Francisco last year, I fell over. I don't just mean tripped over my own feet, got a few bruises and went on with my life - I really did a number on myself. I tripped, went down a few stairs and landed really badly on my ankle; then had to wear stiletto heels for the evening so I didn't ruin my beautiful floor length dress. I knew that the half marathon was coming up and I wanted to be able to still do it, so I took a couple of weeks off to rest it and then started training again, but the problem ended up not being the super sprained ankle. I mean, that was pain, but the real problem was something entirely worse. 

I over-compensated for how bad the ankle was and damaged the soft tissue below my other knee and over stretched the tendon above it. Or over stressed. I wasn't very clear from what my physio said. The first physio I saw told me I would still be able to do the half marathon, and London Landmarks doesn't defer places, so I was doing it, come hell, high water or horrid injury. The second physio I saw had to remind herself that calling patients stupid is neither professional nor nice, but her face gave it away and I knew I was stupid for doing it, but I also knew it was the right thing to do, because it was the best I have felt since probably a bit before this time last year... 

The problem was that my knee wasn't happy from mile 2. For those who don't work in miles, a half marathon is 13.1. Mile 2 I had to stop running, mile 6 I started hobbling, approaching mile 7 I was in the medical bay whilst they bandaged me up and the rest of the way was done with painkillers, determination and that very Mancunian brand of Northern Grit. John Green wrote in TFIOS that pain demands to be felt, well that certainly did. I can manage a bit of running on it, but not even enough to do parkrun (3.1 miles/5km) let alone in a respectable time, so I've been volunteering most weeks and sitting around wishing I could go swimming - I've been getting home too late and I spent two weeks at my mum's - or running or something, other than the physio exercises and just resting it. Thankfully, I have been able to do a bit of stair running, but my God, that hurts. That's not even my knee - my lungs feel like they've evacuated the building when I'm done! 

I was never an athletically inclined person and it's something that I now regret. My parkrun times are longer than most TV shows these days, but I actually love it. Not always the actual doing of it, but the feeling of accomplishment and peace at the end are second to none. 

I'm probably going to try and write up about the run now and post it later, because otherwise, I might forget. 

Catch you later.