Do you ever feel like you’ve lost your running mojo? You’re putting one running foot in front of the other. But each foot feels heavy. It’s what I call a “not feeling it” run. As a runner of many years I’ve had my share of “not feeling it” running days. But the “feeling it” running days where I feel like I can keep running forever and feel light on my feet always outweighed those “not feeling it” days by a huge margin. Well that is, I have just realised, until now.
It finally dawned on me that this global pandemic that we find ourselves in has impacted me full on. Don’t get me wrong. I am physically well. But my body’s energy levels just aren’t what they used to be. It is like it is drained of energy both physically and mentally. And where is this showing itself? Not in my day to day activities, but in my running.
It has taken me a while to come to this realisation. My running hasn’t felt the best for a while now. I kept putting it down to different things…a bad night’s sleep…my sinus’ are at me…a glass too many at the weekend…worrying about how to break the news to my young kid’s about yet another milestone being cancelled…worrying if I’m one of those asymptomatic people and have passed it on to my 84 year old mum…a busy day….working from home….home schooling. In hindsight it is no one of these things. It is a combination of them all. Which is purely and simply lockdown (be if full, partial, pending, potential or otherwise) fatigue and Covid fatigue. And this fatigue is directly impacting my running energy levels as I can probably count on one hand how many “feeling it” running days I have had recently.
This realisation finally dawned on me yesterday. A friend sent me a message saying that she has just signed up for the Virtual Paris Half Marathon. My first thought was ‘ah that brings back such amazing memories of when I ran it with my husband in 2019’. It was so good I even wrote a blog about it. So I sent my friend a link to it. A few minutes later I decided to read it for old time’s sake. And my God did it feel like old times even though it was less than 2 years ago.
The blog I wrote about the Paris Half Marathon was full of enthusiasm, fun and energy. Three things that have been so absent from our lives for nearly a whole year now. I even felt a bit of adrenaline when I was re-reading what I wrote about the race itself. Again adrenaline has been so lacking of late. So I shouldn’t be surprised in the slightest that my running isn’t quite what it used to be.
Now don’t get me wrong. The past 10 months haven’t been all full of doom and gloom. I like everyone have adjusted to our new varying levels of norm but when you take a step back in time, you realise how our new norm really is poles apart from before. And in case you’re wondering, doing a half marathon in Paris is by no means how I normally lived my previous normal life. But if I wanted to do something like that I could. And I did. Which gave such an exciting edge to our old normal days!
But despite everything, I am still running as regularly as always and I will continue to run. Yes running feels tougher than it used to. But many things feel tougher these days but that doesn’t mean that we just stop doing them. So I will keep running and I will keep encouraging others to run. Be it for the first time or to jump back on the running wagon. Because if there’s one thing I know it’s that running has helped me and countless numbers of people get through this pandemic.
So if you are a new runner or are currently becoming a runner don’t worry if you’re finding it tough. Starting to run any time is tough so with the added strains of our pandemic lives it can be even tougher than normal. So keep at it as the rewards and benefits of running far outweigh all else.
And when we are through the pandemic, we will feel lighter (perhaps just metaphorically speaking!) and be so grateful that we got through it and found that runnin’ feeling again despite feeling at times that we really had lost that runnin’ feelin’. And you might just have this old classic running around in your head and a smile on your face because you found that lovin’ runnin’ feelin’ again .
You lost that lovin’ feelin’
Whoa, that lovin’ feelin’
You lost that lovin’ feelin’
Now it’s gone, gone, gone, whoa-oh
If you don’t get a chance to read the blog I wrote about Paris (click here), this is the last paragraph.
“The Rome 2018 and Paris 2019 Half Marathons have just one thing in common. Distance. Everything else about the two experiences are different in so many ways. Neither better nor worse than the other. Just both very different. Which makes for why overseas racing is my new running passion. We are already planning our next year’s overseas half marathon location. I’ll keep you posted.”
And I will.
