After 3+ weeks of work and home being exceptionally busy, and the last two weekends being anything but restful (one in Ballarat visiting my terminally ill dad and one at home hosting Capital I's 18th birthday party with 60 guests), it was nice to have a weekend of "normal busy" activities combined with some social activities and relaxation. Of course there still wasn't enough hours in either Saturday or Sunday but at least I felt like I had a weekend this time unlike the last two weekends.
Partly because I am still feeling below par with my extreme anaemia and partly because the last few weeks have been both labour intensive and emotionally exhausting, I was deliberatly lazy this weekend with running. Both days I woke up when I felt like it rather than to an early am alarm, and both days I ran mid morning and only modest distances.
The other thing I did this weekend was finish "Chasing The Runner's High" by Ray Charbonneau. For the most part this is a chatty autobiography about a new runner's "coming to be" a runner, and while it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know about running, which normally leads me to be critical of books written by runners, I liked this book because of its unpretentious, self critical and honest account of the author's own "hang-ups" about or related to running. What particularly struck a chord was Charbonneau's honesty about his getting into obsessive running becoming closely aligned with him getting into alcoholic socialising with other runners and how this led him to see that his addiction to running was just one manifestation of his addictive personality per se. I think if most of us addictive/compulsive runners are totally honest with ourselves we know that if we weren't addicted to or obsessive about running we could well be addicted to or obsessive about something else. So, .... beware .... It was even more interesting to read how Charbonneau dealt with his addiction to both alcohol and running. Being an addictive type, he couldn't moderate his drinking or just drink every now and then, and so he quit completely. And with running, he's continuing to try to be more moderate about what he expects from himself/his running rather than continuing to want to run either faster or further (option 1 for a full-on addict/obsessive) or quit altogether (option 2). Where Charbonneau is with his running is where all of us addictive/obsessive runners get to whether we do the self analysis he's done or not simply because all us obsessive runners eventually have to accept that we have to run less and recover more, and no matter what ... we do slow down. We just do. (UGH!!!) Taking all that into consideration, I think the important thing we can all do is accept the facts graciously so that running can remain enjoyable and integral to all of our obsessive little lives for as long as we continue to run.
3 comments:
A restful weekend is probably just what you needed Liz. That book sounds really interesting. I may have to borrow it one day:)
Does sound interesting. I'm still on a book borrowed from Andy - 'The Slap', so could be a while for me!
Well said there Liz, just enjoy the running when you can. The prospect of actually winning anything for me was never a chance, too old, too slow.
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