A change of time and place can completely alter one’s perspective. I wrote the following two pieces about my experience of running with Parkinson’s less than a week apart.
Sunday 17 June 2018, South London
Twenty-nine minutes of torture
My chest is tight. My breathing is heavy. My right foot is starting to feel uncomfortable. My legs are screaming at me to stop.
I have run a mile and reached the park entrance. I still have a little over two miles to go.
I look at my stopwatch: if I can hold a pace of 6 minutes per kilometre, I will finish my 5K run in under half an hour.
6 minutes per kilometre.
The thought strikes me as utterly absurd. In my prime I could run 10 miles (16.1K) in under an hour, a pace equivalent to 3 minutes 40 seconds per kilometre.
Stubbornly I press on. There is no longer any pleasure in running; only suffering. The tank is empty and there is no life in my legs. The weather is mild and I am already sweating in my shorts and T shirt.
I go into marathon mode: just keep putting one foot in front of the other to get to the next checkpoint.
My chest is tight. My breathing is heavy. My right foot is starting to feel uncomfortable. My legs are screaming at me to stop.
I have run a mile and reached the park entrance. I still have a little over two miles to go.
I look at my stopwatch: if I can hold a pace of 6 minutes per kilometre, I will finish my 5K run in under half an hour.
6 minutes per kilometre.
The thought strikes me as utterly absurd. In my prime I could run 10 miles (16.1K) in under an hour, a pace equivalent to 3 minutes 40 seconds per kilometre.
Stubbornly I press on. There is no longer any pleasure in running; only suffering. The tank is empty and there is no life in my legs. The weather is mild and I am already sweating in my shorts and T shirt.
I go into marathon mode: just keep putting one foot in front of the other to get to the next checkpoint.
2K. Through my
peripheral vision, I see other runners in the park but I keep my head down and
stay focussed in my own world.
2.5K. Halfway. Now my
left leg also feels heavy and sluggish. Is this because I have reached stage 2
of Parkinson’s so that it affects both sides of my body, or is my left leg
taking more strain because of my lame right leg? Difficult to tell.
3K. A young girl on a
scooter zips by perilously close but I don’t have the reactions to manoeuvre
out of the way; fortunately, she swerves at the last second. I head past the
ice cream van towards the park exit.
4K. I run past a local
school playing field where there is a cricket match taking place. A spectator, a grey-haired slightly portly
man with a ruddy, jolly face plays some sort of chasing game with a boy,
presumably his grandson, just outside the boundary. He seems more athletic than
me and for a moment I feel a tinge of disappointment. But the emotion soon
passes as I muster the motivation for the home stretch.
4.5K. I approach a set
of traffic lights near my road. In days gone by I would hope for the green man,
so as not to interrupt my fast pace. Now I will the red man to appear so that I
have an excuse to stop for a few seconds.
Annoyingly it’s the
green man and I press on over the last few hundred metres to the finish line.
I stop my watch. As I
walk to the front door I read the time: 28:47. Smashed it.
It was twenty-nine minutes of torture. But at least I can still run 5K.
Saturday 23 June 2018, St Ives, Cornwall
The joys of running
It is hard work staggering up the steep narrow wooded coastal trails but I am rewarded with red fuscias and purple foxgloves. The air is heavy with the scent of summer bloom, or so I imagine. I can feel a heaviness in the atmosphere as I breathe but I can’t actually smell anything. Nevertheless the wild flowers do look exquisite.
I cross over a railway bridge and catch a glimpse of Carbis Bay far below. With the tide out, it is a glorious stretch of sand, shimmering in the 7am sun, and I know I have to experience it close up.
I run very slowly, taking care down the steep dowhill stretches, but eventually reach the beach, dotted with a few dog-walkers and kayakers taking advantage of the early morning calm sea. I jog down to the water’s edge.
And then I immerse myself in the moment. For a couple of precious minutes I am Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, striding across the gorgeous firm sand. Lungs full of sea air, wind in my hair, radiant sun on my face, the swoosh of the waves breaking gently by my side. My body tingles with energy as I stretch my legs, relax my shoulders and push out my chest.
I have a feeling of déjà vu: I have not been to this beach before and yet it feels familiar, as if I have run along it in my dreams.
My legs can’t sustain the elevated pace for long and I pause by the barnacle-coated rocks at the end of the bay to recover.
It will be a bit of a slog to get back to our hotel in St Ives, but it will have been worth the effort. Clara will likely still be sleeping when I return; I wish she could have shared the experience with me.
I have rediscovered the joys of running.
Now I must find a way to bottle them, so that I can sip a little of their sweetness in the difficult times.
