…come on we all know that I am not actually ever going to get my shit together! I massively jumped ahead in my virtual challenge by including a couple of Zwift rides. I made a good start with running and then a good start with the Dynamic Runner April 2 week challenge before getting derailed again. Our friend came to stay for the weekend. Well from Friday morning to Sunday morning. We’d all taken Friday off work so went for a lovely long walk at Bolton Abbey. On Saturday I had to work (Open Day) and then it was somehow Wednesday before I did anything exercise-y again and that was only a little walk. And then it was today. Yesterday I was so tired I basically got up late, did a few bits in the garden with Kath, had lunch, fell asleep for most of the afternoon, had tea, watched some tv, went to bed.

Today I woke up feeling a little better, less dazed and confused. After breakfast I did some yoga and after pottering about a little I did day 5 of the April challenge (hello glutes). There is something about running though. I want to. I mean I want to get back to the running fitness where I can just pop out for a quick 5km and it not really be a thing. To get there I need to get out consistently and I want to but… so I am spending some time doing yoga and doing some strength work to figure out what that ‘but’ is all about. I think there are several things going on.

1. Running means going out there – like where other people might be. I don’t feel hugely confident at the moment. I feel super unfit (because I am) and I just don’t want to deal with the feeling of being judged. This is all on me. I know very few people are judging, very few people would even notice me or pay me any attention at all. All of the other runners I see out and about either nod, ignore or say something encouraging. And even if people are judging, since when do I care? And when I stop to consider it, I don’t care. So it’s all weird.
2. I can’t make decisions about running. I am struggling to decide where to run, what route to take. It feels like another decision, another thing to be a responsible adult about. I also can’t decide on a plan so therefore I can’t decide what sort of run I am doing and so I just don’t do anything. I should just pick a plan. I have a strong anti couch to 5km plan reaction at the moment. No idea what that’s about. I could go runDisney plan but that doesn’t tell me what intervals to run. I could just run completely by feel but then I might just walk and not push at all and I still have to decide where. I know, weird and stupid.
3. I absolutely completely do not want to ‘jiggle’. That sensation at the moment is a hard no. I have that about running and also about HIIT. Anything that involves jiggling, I’m out. I have good sports bras, it’s not that. I look after my boobs quite well and make sure they have all the support they need – but I still just don’t want to jiggle. It’s not painful, it’s not even uncomfortable. It’s just jiggling. And jiggling is currently right up there with rolling around in nettles. So there’s that.
4. Let’s talk about doing hard. I have been thinking about whether I am actually just in one of those phases where I just can’t or don’t want to do hard things. I think it probably is true that work is currently taking up a lot of emotional capacity for all sorts of reasons and that therefore I want easy outside of that. But I also think it is true that I want brain easy not physical easy. Anything that requires decision making feels impossible. The bike works well here because once I have decided on the programme (generally by picking the one recommended for me), I just get on the bike, do as I am told until the ride is done. No decisions needed. No questions about whether I could take an extra rest or cut the route short because the bike doesn’t give me a choice. I don’t have to think, I just do. Same thing for a yoga session or the dynamic runner workout or one of the Joe Wicks sessions. As long as there is no jiggling, there is no issue. Press play, do. I can’t always do all the exercises but my brain can cope with modifying a side plank or dropping to knees in a push up. What it can’t seem to cope with is deciding whether to turn left or right when I reach the end of our road.

So anyway, over the last week I have made zero progress on the challenge. So virtually I guess I am hanging out in Cienfuegos. That’s funny really because I don’t think we spent much time there at all on our trip. We left Havana on the morning of the 29th December 2010 and we stayed in the hotel on the outskirts of Trinidad that night. We stopped off several times along the way (and I’ll see if my virtual route takes me to some of those stop offs as I am going the other way). Thinking back to the trip, we took a slightly different route with different sights. While on the real trip we did some hiking in the Escambray Mountains, spent New Year’s Eve under the stars and had a dip in the pool under the Salto del Rocio waterfall located within Parque Guanayara; the virtual challenge headed for El Nicho waterfall. I assume because it is closer to the road between Trinidad and Cienfuegos and a more popular tourist spot (according to Google anyway). In a way it is a shame that the way I covered distance in the challenge meant I sort of hopped across from Trinidad to Cienfuegos almost missing the bits in-between. Because those couple of nights in the Escambray Mountains were really spectacular. They were also a bit meh because Kath inadvertently had orange and was poorly for New Year and had to do a good chunk of hiking feeling crap (she’s allergic). But it was stunning to be there and we were lucky to see a meteor shower which lit up the sky with shooting stars. I know sometimes it feels like the magic is struggling to cling on, work can seem pointless, people can be vile and stupid, the world is on fire and there is so much wrong that we feel powerless to fix but thinking back to evenings like those is a reminder that the magic is there. I am going to try and look for it more. I know that night is a long long time ago now but there is the same joy to be found in our sunrises and sunsets, the birds coming to our feeders, the deer we see on our runs and the hedgehogs busying themselves in our garden at night. It was there this morning when little Stormcat interrupted my yoga and came and curled up on me and purred.

So maybe it’s not about getting my shit together. Maybe it is just about noticing the magic, smiling and rolling with it. Just as long as there’s no jiggling, I’m ok with that.