I had to go to a meeting today in Wetherby. Now, Friday meetings fill me with dread... they are boring, normally quite argumentative and they finish with you feeling like you want to bang your head against a brick wall. Then there is the drive home in rush hour traffic, making the hour long journey a lot longer. This was exacerbated by the fact a truck had been on fire at 7am.... and as I got to the same spot this afternoon, the aftermath was still being felt! That added a further 30 minutes onto the already long dragged out trip!
I never train after meetings. I'm normally in too much of a sulk and too knackered. Today that was not an option... after so long of not doing much cardiovascular exercise and today being the day the pad came off my foot, I decided that irrelevant of how shit I was feeling, I was going deep water running. The kit was already in the car boot and I was dying to see how much harder it would be when using ankle weights.
I eventually got to the swimming baths and quickly got ready, convinced the place would be full of kids screaming, splashing and messing around to the point exercising would be very difficult. I was delighted to see this was not the case and it was fairly quiet. I walked up to the lifeguard with my slip (they give you a coloured armband so you do not overstay your welcome) and she looked me up and down. Seeing the ankle weights and my flotation belt she quickly retreated with the arm band, clearly thinking, "Well, she's not going to be in here long with all that on".
The first 2 minutes were really hard, and I did at this point think that 30 minutes of this would be out of the question, however, I settled into a rhythm nicely and got to work. I had been in there about 10 minutes when 2 little girls (maybe 6 years old) asked me, "Are you swimming? It looks like you are walking in the water". I explained that I was running and that I was doing it because it makes you very fit, which must have convinced them it was worth a go. They began moving through the water and practically drowning in the process.. "God, that's proper hard that... I can't do it", one of them said as her friend said she could do it a little bit. There was definitely a bit of underwater front crawl going on with her, but I said she was doing good. Before long, I see I have a few kids looking at me strangely and before I know it I have a little entourage of boys and girls all trying to deep water run. It was lovely to see I had got them interested enough to keep trying. My mind at this point flicked back to the meeting today. As I walked in this morning, one of my colleagues said, "Guess what I did today Claire? I got up at 5am and I did a 25 minute run... well... not quite a run, but I'm getting there". Another colleague came in and proudly laid down his sponsor form for Alzheimer's... he's running a half marathon the same day I am finishing my 12 hour event in Basel. Another one announced he's bitten the bullet and entered a 6 mile race (also in May), and another one asked me how does he get going with running and was it OK to walk bits at first. A visitor to our region (from Head Office) said to her colleague, "Oh yeah, this is the running district", and someone chipped in that it was all my fault! I felt very proud that my antics had inspired others to get off the sofa. When I first started running, the finance officer told me I was the only runner in the company... and now that is not the case! :-)
So, I left the swimming baths feeling on a high... finally back training again and it just felt very good. The funniest thing today had to be the chatter in the changing rooms though... the same two 6 year olds were in the changing room next to me, and I heard one of them say, "Listen when you see her, don't tell her that I've told you... pretend you don't know and just smile". "OK", the other one offered, "I'll pretend I don't know anything about her past".
Hilarious... at 6 years old, some poor girl already has a past!
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