Branded Blog

In about February this year I started to run. Not very far, and really not very fast, but I was doing my best Forrest impersonation and that was fairly impressive for me really.

Running, you see, has never really featured on my To do list. At all. Ever.

In fact when the Brat was visiting earlier this year and came up the Saddle route with us he was fairly impressed that I was attempting running: “After all,” he said in all seriousness, “ you’ve actually never really done any cardio-type exercise in your life.”  I was taken aback and said I’d played tennis and hockey at school and that should count, but he just raised his eyebrows at me and said “Not the way you played them.”

Really, the cheek of it.

But once I stopped laughing and gave it some decent thought, I realised that he was pretty much right – cardio has never been high on my list. I hated every second of  the enforced horrors of school Cross-country and Gala events, I only ran as much as absolutely required on the hockey fields and tennis courts and even then I only did those because Dad insisted that I play both a summer and winter sport before I was allowed to do ballet – which, you’ll be relieved to know, I loved.

So this whole running for the sake of it is an entirely new idea in my little life, and it came in with the Trojan horse of my husband, the infamous barefoot mountain man.

But it did take a while – he was extremely patient and savvy enough to let me skittishly sidle up to the idea rather than force it onto the agenda. He used Phoebe-dog in the beginning – she is now 13 years old and when she sees barefoot man in his running kit she runs….in the opposite direction and hides behind me! She had been pushed to the limit by barefoot man a couple of times too many and had summarily retired herself as his running buddy, and so that was the incentive for me – to take her for a brisk walk when the barefoot man and fleet footed newbie runner-bean companion went for a run (he’s very annoying, the newbie runner-bean, also fairly new to running, but such a natural he leaves me behind in literally two strides. Most infuriatingly impressive.)

And thus it begins. First you figure out just how absolutely unfit and useless you are (a walk up Lion’s head jeep track can take it out of you!), and then you realise that it’s just gorgeous to be out on these mountains and seeing the city and the sea at the same time, and then you start taking photos and wanting to find new angles and viewpoints and before you know it you’re saying “ok, I’ll join the boys”, buying minimalist running shoes and panting up the Saddle or Kloof Corner or running the contour path and dodging waterfalls and absolutely loving every second of it – wind, rain, cold and all.

Not even the early darkness of CT winter can keep us off the mountain. Never thought I’d hear myself say that!

And yes,  the photo opps are spectacular.

 And of course there are lessons along the way…

• Focus on the trail.    You can’t focus on anything except the trail when you’re on it.  You can’t get on the trail and then worry about email or dinner or that meeting tomorrow. If you do, you’ll almost immediately step on the wrong rock, turn an ankle or go flying face-first into the dirt. Like pretty much anything else, you need to do this trail thing wholeheartedly, or not at all. Be with it and commit to it and then when it’s done, do something else. Don’t dillydally around trying to do ten things at once, it just gets messy. Be the trail, people, be the trail. And then smile and move on to the next thing. Focus, be clear what you’re trying to do and don’t get side-tracked too often!

• Showing up is half the battle.  Just keep doing it, and you’ll get better despite yourself.  I keep whinging at the barefoot man – usually halfway up the Saddle climb –  that I’m sure I’m not any fitter than when I started and why on earth am I not getting any better/faster/more elegant etc! To which he wisely answers that not only am I now able to whinge while climbing instead of sitting down to complain, but I also could literally not even reach the contour path the first time he took me up the mountain!  If you just keep doing it, no matter how pathetic your attempts seem to you, you will inevitably get better and faster and probably start enjoying it at some stage. Another really fascinating thing I learned from him while puffing up the mountain is that even the best of the best still feel like it’s hard work and still hurt – they push the edge of their limits in the same way us mere mortals do. They don’t feel comfortable, they still feel like it’s hard work – their limits are just at a different level. So even if it doesn’t feel like you’re winning, know that every time you make the effort to get out there, you’re doing better than before. And that rocks. Literally!

• Chase those waterfalls.  You never know where your limits are or what you could be capable of unless you try something new.  So when the barefoot man in your life looks out the window at the pouring rain and crazy winter storms and says “Lets go run on the mountain” you should go. Even is you swear at him first, call him all sorts of names on the way there and insist that he has now finally totally lost the plot, GO. Go and run in that windy storm, go and run through the ankle-deep puddles and across the mini-torrents of hitherto dry rivers, go and stand behind the waterfall that wasn’t there two days ago and just enjoy every second of it as you realise that you’re having a ball! You’re not as cold as you expected, and you don’t care about being wet nearly as much as you thought you would and you are loving the drama of the clouds and the wet Proteas and the dramatic views and the sheer joy of running round a corner and finding a spectacular waterfall!

• Trust where your eyes go. Something I noticed when running at night with a head-torch (yup, have one of those now) is where your eyes are actually looking is quite different to where you think they are looking and where your feet are. The head torch needs to be where your eyes are looking, and not where your feet are, otherwise you fall. Trust me. And where your eyes focus is actually about two meters in front of you. Your eyes are always looking ahead, seeing the obstacles and giving the brain time to find the best route around or over them so that you don’t slow down too much and lose momentum, which is hard won. It’s fascinating how much our bodies already know and how efficient they are, and sometimes we just have to get out of their way and let them do thing. And sometimes we need to learn a thing or two from them, like keep your eyes ahead of your feet otherwise you won’t see what’s coming down the line and you won’t be able to prepare for the obstacles and opportunities along the way.

• Believe in the zone. Even if you don’t experience it for a long time, believe it exists. Cause when you suddenly find yourself flying down the trail under from the Saddle near Devil’s Peak and not thinking about anything except how light you feel and how awesome everything seems right then and you realise this is it! This is what they mean! Of course the next day it will be no-where in sight, but now you know it exists. And you know that if you keep running, you’re that much more likely to find it again, and so you keep coming back to the mountain because you believe. And that makes all the difference.