To Dream of Couscous – Couch to 5k week 4

A sideways look at age, Blogging, Colin McQueen - writer, Getting Older, Hobbies, Humour, My Life 2 Minutes
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I have friends who claim to love running.  They are clearly deranged.

I take so long in ‘getting ready’ to undertake my thirty minutes of torture that often, with a little foresight, I could have been back before I started.  My overriding pre-run emotion is dread of what is to come.  During the run I am smugly satisfied that my dread has been justly vindicated.  Only during the post-run shower, in anticipation of the well-earned chocolate and red wine (it doesn’t do to lose weight too quickly at my age) do I feel any sense of achievement.  There is certainly never any sense of enjoyment about it.  At times I would sooner be water-boarded.

I have re-started work this week after furlough and consequently, after eight hours of miserable monotony (which encompasses ten thousand steps apparently) I return home to run before settling down for the much-truncated evening.  What kind of a life is that?  It is like being told that you are having quinoa for dinner, but not to worry, you won’t have time for seconds as you have to worm the cat.  What kind of person dreams of couscous?

And why do I desperately feel the need to wee within minutes of leaving the house to run?  It passes, but only because it cannot compete with the necessity to find oxygen from somewhere, nor the desire to separate my tongue from the roof of my mouth.  I have no idea whether men have a pelvic floor, but if they do, I fear that mine must be subterranean.

Despite all of this, my main concern is not of collapse, but of encountering somebody I know.  My route is an amorphous, constantly changing beast; adapting at a moment’s notice in order to avoid any kind of social interaction whilst gasping.   When forced into a salutary smile, I am aware that it emerges like rigor.  I can feel the whispered, ‘Should he really be doing that at his age?’  I would like to yell back, ‘No, he bloody well shouldn’t!’ but I don’t have the breath.  Anybody who claims to glean any kind of enjoyment from this torment should be certified.  It is not normal.

You may, by now, have begun to share my own amazement that I am still doing this.  I am doing it simply because nobody (including me) thought that I would and until I have proved everybody wrong, I cannot possibly stop.  Like a character in Eastenders I have weeks of misery in me yet – and I take absolutely no joy from saying so.

The previous Couch to 5k instalment, ‘Return of the Mummy’ is here.
The next Couch to 5k instalment, ‘The Power of Two’ is here.
Couch to 5k begins here.

Published by colinmcqueen

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17 thoughts on “To Dream of Couscous – Couch to 5k week 4”

  1. The needing to wee is also common as soon as you are wrapped in lycra jersey and bib shorts for going out for a cycle (cycling is my thing rather than running due to it actually being quite pleasant when done right, i.e. not trying to go fast enough for it to hurt).

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    1. I ride my bike a lot, but lycra is not the thing for someone who always looks overstuffed. Mind you, cycling is little more than slow motion sightseeing for me – bugger wind-resistance 🙂

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      1. This is true, which is why, for me, the lycra is my comfort layer, whereas the baggy touring type shorts I wear over it is out of respect for what everyone else has to see!
        I am a pootler too, the younger types thing of trying to be fast, or even fastest, with apps and segments and all that is long beyond me.

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  3. Go on, you love it! Feel that runners high, that joyous chaffing, the sweaty rush that might also be urine…… And that’s the taste of sweet healthy air, not nauseous bile.
    Sorry, must run.
    Just trying to buck you up!

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  5. Condolences (I checked and condolences can be used in times of great suffering, not just death). Keep it up champ, defiance is a great motivator.

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