Onwards

 

The fact that it's just over a month since the Copthorne and I haven't written a follow-up post until now is probably all you need to know about recovery. The last four weeks of term were very busy and stressful, and basically I had no time to recover. It took until Christmas Day for the physical side of things to really hit, although other than a couple of persistent niggles, recovery seemed to be going well.

Mentally, recovery is proving to be a very strange and unsettling process, but more of that in a bit.

Here's what I can recall of the immediate post-race period:

Straight after the race was just odd. As I said in the race blog, I felt nothing. It also felt odd to stop moving forward. I didn't expect to want to eat and true to post-race form I couldn't face any food, just cups of tea. I remember Alan being delighted to give me the second place trophy and then waiting anxiously to see if the only other woman out on the course would finish before the cut-off. But much of it is very hazy. Lisa was a hero and removed my socks and tried to clean my feet up. I can't remember anything else really except at one point I wanted to get off the chair, and as I stood up black spots appeared, my head felt hot and huge waves of nausea washed over me. I said to Mike that I was going to pass out, some people caught me and helped me lie down. Then I was lying in an emergency cot, Lindley took my temperature and checked my blood sugar. I think I was a bit cold. 

It took quite some time before I was able to be upright without feeling extremely wobbly and faint. Did my legs and feet hurt? Honestly I can't remember other than not being able to put shoes on because my big toes were such a mess. The short drive back to Mike's once the race was all over and everything packed up was really uncomfortable- sitting was just about the last thing my body wanted to be doing! Once back at his, I was ok getting up and down the stairs although I still had to take the sideways approach to going down them.

The week after:

I was content to do no exercise at all, and in any case I was too busy. It was good, if a little strange, to be able to stay in bed until 6am. Not having to train in the evenings made the end of the day feel less frantic too which was just as well as I was often on taxi duty for one or both of my teens. My appetite was off, but I've learned to just go with it; eat what and when my body says to, and not to worry about it. However, I'd planned to continue with recovery protein drinks to aid healing if I wasn't eating much but completely forgot to do this.

By the following weekend I was mentally very much ready to start back training. My body had other ideas though so I just tried to move a bit each day for 20-30 minutes and if anything hurt or felt uncomfortable than it was time to stop or back off. A bit of rowing, a bit of yoga- I tried running but the knee pain returned. I tried lifting too but it's taken until now for picking up heavy things to feel ok.

The brain side of it all:

Possibly the hardest thing has been the mental side of recovery. I've continued to feel literally nothing about finishing that race and that is actually really upsetting. Why can't I feel good about what I achieved? Why do I have no desire to celebrate the completion of a year-long project? Why do I still feel completely numb about the whole thing? In fact I've been going over the race reflecting on what I want to do better next time, because it hasn't take that long for me to know that I need to go back and make a better go of it. But that won't be in 2023- I need to do some different things in the coming year and work with some shorter-term goals.

I think that the focus of training for Copthorne was really important for me all year. It gave me purpose; it meant I had to not just train well but actively take time to look after myself both in terms of nutrition and rest; it gave me a reason to wake up each day. The huge mental effort of training day after day, month after month kept a great deal of sadness at bay, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that I was able to pour all that pain into my training and put it to good use. When I was a musician, my best creative work was born out of dreadful bleakness, hurt and despair so it's not so ridiculous to say that this time it fuelled and inspired my training.

Something from the race is haunting me but I can't seem to put it into words. There was something about those last few loops of the Copthorne... Being utterly consumed by physical and mental pain in those last 20 or 30 miles, feeling so completely alone, overwhelmed and annihilated by the process... Honestly I don't know how to begin to describe it. Enduring that nightmare for those hours has changed me somehow, or at least left an indelible mark. I can't say that I am stronger or better for it, just, well, different. I think it's really hard not being able to describe what I mean because it makes me feel so isolated and I want so badly to share the experience with you. Perhaps it's this inability to articulate the experience that is the reason for feeling numb. 

The future:

To try to regain some feeling of control I've set myself a goal of training for a road marathon in the first half of the coming year. I've put a 10k trail time trial in the diary in January (possibly to repeat a month later), and then a 50k in March (which will mess up the training a bit but it's really just planned as a fun day out) and actually have a 4 month training plan to follow. This is all rather out of my comfort zone but doing something different feels like the right thing to do. Training to run faster might prove to be too much but it doesn't matter if it is. Shifting focus for a few months onto intensity and quality rather than volume should bring both short and longer-term gains even if I end up having to bail out of the marafun.

I guess you'll just have to watch this space to see...