Meant to be doing a 20 mile recce of part of the 47 miler today to test out my kit including the pretty new trail ultra shoes that just arrived today but instead am sat on my chair with an angry dog on my knee (he don’t like me going out) with can’t go can’t repeating over and over  and trying to not to hit my head to the beat of the words.  When I started getting ready an hour ago I felt ok but by the time I get back from walking the dog I knew that I was starting to go funny.  My mouth gets dry, my head goes fuzzy and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth because it feels double in size.   The world becomes like a 3D picture when your not wearing the glasses.  Nothing is quite in the right place and it ain’t moving right because you’ve gone into slow motion but the rest of the world hasn’t.

I should have stopped kidding myself that this run was going to happen when I put the music on for Giz.  The beat of some stupid some (think it was Hey Ya) was blown up by like a billion magnitude in my head to wear I had to turn it off again because I couldn’t escape the beat.  It just kept banging and banging and banging over and over.  I’m too stubborn though so I still stretched and went out the door.  I got a total of one minute down the street before I had to turn and come back.  If willing made it so I’d be on the TransPennine Trail by now (although the dog would be more unhappy) but I just can’t do it.  I’m rubbish.

It’s difficult because it feels like you’re giving up and giving in, I spent a lot of my time feeling like a failure but I just can’t do it.  I can’t get my tongue to the right place, I can’t stop my hand from shaking, I can’t stop from wanting to hit my head and I can’t see properly or talk (I can type today though, last week when I was really bad I couldn’t put words together.  This is one of the few times I’ve been able to type about what is happening as it is happening). I know all of this but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating or make you feel any less of a failure.  I’ll be stuck on this chair a few hours now, date night will be replaced with my very amazing husband figuring out what he can do for tea that don’t require cutlery.  Hopefully the can’t do it’s on repeat and the beat beat beat will have gone out of my head by then but at least the dog has stopped being angry for my 2 minute absence and has gone back to sleep so now I just have to find something easy to do (like finding pictures of medals) until I get my limbs back and my head goes back to normal again.  It could be hours or days or over a week like last time.  You can’t plan around it so you just have to give planning anyway (which means you let people down, sorry).  Tomorrow, Warrington parkrun (cos I can do that at like 50% wellness and have done many times) and another attempt at a 20 miler to Widnes because if I just sit (with my pretty new shoes on) thinking about the alternative, that I ain’t moving off this chair again, then I really have given up and given in.

Hopefully this explains to some people (the ones who say that if I can run I can get a job) how running keeps me going and why I won’t stop planning runs and races.