Peaks and Troughs

Permission not to run and a touch of solastalgia

After a consistent spell of running for the past couple of months I’ve not done much over the past two weeks. It’s bothering me. I feel like I’m walking around with invisible sandbags draped over my shoulders.

I know I need to shake it off and I know I will, eventually.

But should I even worry about it?

There are multiple reasons for not running, as there always are. My focus has been elsewhere, mainly on work and writing projects. I often underestimate how much mental stress can be physically draining.

Running can often be the jolt I need to be more productive or de-stress, and I know that. But that knowledge and reasoning doesn’t always win out. It’s seemed like an extra burden recently, just something else to add to the list of Things I Absolutely Should Be Doing.

I just haven’t been able to prioritise running. Added to this, in times of stress I have the unfortunate response of constantly thinking about starting something new. My brain jumps from one thing to the next instead of just dealing with what’s in front of my face or checking off the simple things.

I’m sure it’s a common problem. We avoid doing difficult things by stacking other things in front, therefore building an unscalable wall of reasons we can’t reach goals. And so we’re left to sit at the bottom, dejected but accepting that it’s not our fault. It’s just too tough.

Sometimes the deflections we use are just easy, manageable things. Something that requires no thought. One of my worst habits is sitting down to write then immediately getting up again. Suddenly, I’m desperately hungry or in need of coffee. I snack constantly when I’m trying to concentrate. Logically I know I’m not hungry, but my brain is looking for a diversion instead of confronting the problem at hand.

Even now, writing this, reasoning the whole thing out, I’m just about to stop and get a coffee. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help it.

Sometimes obvious problems don’t have easy solutions. Sometimes we’re just dumb animals enslaved to our lizard brains.

When faced with everyday stress I often flee or freeze. This is why running can be a good reset. On one hand I think it serves my flight response, but more importantly it forces me to focus on something and slow my brain down. When I’m running I’m not flicking between tabs I absolutely need to keep open, or pogoing around the house picking up obscure pieces of kids’ toys and eating biscuits.

When you’re running, you are only running.

But again, despite my understanding of this I still can’t run as often as I need to.

The weather has a hand in this. It hasn’t been bad as such (it hasn’t been great), it just hasn’t been right. At the moment it’s about 12C outside, windy and wet. It’s just not winter, and I feel stuck in this nothing-season limbo.

I’m still waiting for winter to kick in, but I’m also anticipating spring, and I don’t know if there’s any biological science or sense in this, but I know I don’t feel right. I can’t get over the feeling that I’m waiting for something to happen, and when it does, I’ll be free again.

I hope this isn’t just our climate reality shifting, but I suspect it probably is. I understand the meaning of solastalgia. I think I’ve been feeling it for a while.

Iain Cameron @theiaincameron

Proof, if it were needed, that last month was the least snowy January since before 2008. It was even worse than 2017, which was abject. lochaberblog.sais.gov.uk/2022/01/dry-ja…

The other thing I need to shake is the feeling that running anything less than 10 miles is a waste of time. I’m not sure when this seed of nonsense was planted but it’s something that does adversely affect how often I run. I prefer long runs because I find them more beneficial mentally, but I need to find the value in shorter runs, too.

Above all I probably need to recognise that it’s fine not to run. It’s not like it’s my job.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d guess that peaks and troughs are a natural cycle in everything we do, no matter how much we love it.

Over the past few years I’ve found that there are times when all I want to do is run. Every minute of the day is spent thinking about going running and without any commitments perhaps I’d just keep going. I try to capitalise on these feelings, because I know they won’t last forever.

At other times, a bit like now, I struggle to find the time, or other things overwhelm me. But that’s ok. I need to give myself permission not to run, and not feel guilty about that.

I tend towards feast or famine with most things in my life. Running is one of the most consistent things I’ve found but it’s not excluded from this. And so I try to follow this simple rule: go as much as possible when I feel like it, and don’t worry when I can’t.

A bothy that once was great but sadly no longer exists

This weekend I likely won’t be running. Instead I’ll be hiking into a remote glen to spend a couple of nights in a bothy with some friends. It’ll be cold and windy and snowing. We’ll climb some hills, light a fire, drink whisky and sleep on hard wooden floors. We’ll likely spend a significant portion of it damp and cold, but this will be offset by laughter and the joy of no phone signal.

The weather looks properly grim, but perhaps, finally, properly wintry.

I’ll take some running shoes, just in case.

And if I don’t use them, well, I can always go running next week.