22 | Beginning Again

During covid, I stopped running.

It wasn't an intentional decision and I don't think it happened all at once. Rather it did so it fits and starts. Little pieces of slowing down before cessation really took hold. As the grind of lock-down ramped up, I ramped down.

It's likely unsurprising that this was not a good idea. Not for my physical health, certainly, especially as it was paired with far more eating and drinking and general self-appeasement than I usually did, and definitely not for my mental health. Add that to the fact that I was entering my mid-thirties, a time when my metabolism was likewise deciding to pull things back a bit. My body wasn't the lithe flesh-sack I could just throw large amounts of snacking at and it would bounce right back. No, now there were continuing repercussions to my indulgence.

And while it might be easy to self-flagellate here, the truth is I just didn't have the motivation to go for a run. Suddenly, I couldn't see the point. I think part of it was being removed from my community for that time. Without people around me to both judge and inspire me, the impulse lessened. Add that to the fact that it was widely regarded as a time when you could just take it easy. The world was on fire, we were going through unprecedented times, there was a general permission to just do whatever you needed to get through it.

So, I stopped running.

I first started running when I was around twenty or so. I had never been an athletic kid. While I did play basketball for a number of years, in my very first game I spent most of my time skipping around the court, which should tell you everything you need to know about my athletic mindset. I was a reader. If I wanted a workout I would sit on my bed and read about some character in some fantasy land practising sword-craft. Given this, it's odd that I can't recall what it was that made me decide to take up running.

I think it's likely what I found myself suddenly lacking during covid, a community to inspire me. Both of my brothers, my Dad, my cousin Dom, and two of my friends; first Nick Boothman and then later Josh Hellings. Each helped nurture the seed that was me running, mostly by doing it themselves.

I started slow, literally and metaphorically. My early runs were all from the house I grew up in Traralgon. Leaving at the corner of the property, and making my way up Freemans Road, then Paysley, around the corner onto Scrubby Lane, quickly turning again onto Tyres Road, veering off of that to follow the dogleg of Mark Drive, at the end of which I'd hit Grey Street, which I'd follow until finding Freemans Road again and heading home. Around three kilometres in total, but initially I was running maybe about half of it, and even that only in small bursts, the rest of the time was walking.

I think I knew from the start that I'd never be a great runner. But I also didn't want to be. I just wanted to run, to know I had done some exercise. Running was a cost effective way of doing this that also didn't rely on anyone else's schedule the way team sports did.

I did that 3k loop for a year. I can clearly remember the first time I did it all without stopping. Running the whole circuit. I can hear the mad thought in my mind saying what if I managed to run the whole thing! I can feel my legs pumping, my lungs bellowing as I made my way back up Freemans Road, so close to achieving this small goal but still feeling so far from it, my body signalling an almost constant suggestion that I stop. When I made it back onto the property, Mum was outside. She said something along the lines of 'that was quick', the perfect thing she could of said, and I burst out, breathless, 'I ran the whole thing!'

I can also remember the first time I ran 5k. This was also in Traralgon, at least a year after I had started putting on my running shoes, which I'm pretty sure initially were just whatever sneakers I owned at the time. This time I was running with a friend, the aforementioned Nick Boothman. He had a body made for running, an easy lope paired with a positive demeanour. He displayed both as he jogged beside me. I say jogged because while I was definitely running he seemed not to be. He instead kept up a near constant banter while I occasionally managed to huff out one word replies. When he told me at the start of the run that we were going to do five kilometres, I told him in no uncertain terms that I could not do that, but that as long as he was happy to stop and walk when I would inevitably need to then I was happy to at least traverse the full 5k. He agreed, I think already quietly pleased at the challenge I had just unknowingly presented him; to make me, through cajoling and persuasion and encouragement, to do what I was sure I couldn't. Run the full 5k.

And as you now know, he succeeded. I internally cursed him through each of those final steps, wanting both to stop and for him to stop talking so I could hear myself think about how much I wanted to stop and give in to that impulse. But his devilishness and friendliness wouldn't allow it, and he got me across that finish line. I remember afterwards mostly just feeling astonishment. Damian Robb couldn't run 5k and there was no part of how I viewed myself that allowed for the reality that I had just done so (it would be years yet before I recognised that I had some issues with self esteem, but this was a nice step against them). Once I was finally able to wrap my head around the fact, I was elated, buoyant. I realised that now that I had managed the impossible, it could never be taken away from me. No matter what happened, I would still forever be a guy that had run 5k.

The first time I ran 10k, I was out on my own. On a track I've now run or walked or jogged or cycled so many times that it feels like I could mentally do so in my mind and not miss a single detail. But this was one of the earlier ones, and certainly the first where I saw a leg of that track that I never had before.

The track is the Moonee Ponds Creek track. I was running from my house towards the city. Leaving the well known path and entering new terrain as I headed toward my never before reached 5k turn around point. I felt like an explorer. Suddenly there was new on a path that I was already growing familiar with. I stared around at it with wonder, looked at the new stretch of aqueduct, the tall community towers, the train station perched up on a hill and the elevated train line reaching for it, lanes of traffic passing underneath. I smiled, strong and confident, 5k now a relatively standard distance for me to run. I smiled wider as I picked a structure that would work as my makeshift marker, a red and white striped security pole, and gave it a slap before shuffling my still jogging feet around and starting back home.

I wasn't smiling for long. My body knew it's limits and wasn't happy with me exceeding them. I was taking a leap, moving from 8k, my previous personal best, to 10. Almost as soon as my watch told me I had clicked over the eight I felt the weariness descend. First there was the rush, once more I was doing the impossible, crossing distances I thought only other people could run, but it was quickly railroaded by a breathlessness that tried it's best to convince me I was suffocating. With all the running I've done since, before or after, I don't think I've experienced any that were harder, that required so much of me mentally. Even now I can still put myself back there. The challenge was so total and demanding that it has burned into my consciousness as an easily accessible touchstone. A marker where whenever I feel like I'm at my limit I can return to and think well I don't feel as depleted as I did then.

Determination drove me. Now I wasn't just resiting my body's suggestions that I stop, I was actively fighting them. I felt like weeping, both the slave and the taskmaster. I wanted it so much. To achieve this new goal. And I wanted my feet and my lungs and my heart to get me there, to cross the finish line without ever stopping once.

I also really really wanted to stop.

Those final two kilometres were slow, my legs heavy, as if turned to stone. Inside my mind was a battle, with a forceful, if not unkind, version of me, needing to constantly railroad a pleading and desperate and tired one. Just don't stop was my mantra, a pretty basic one, and it really become more of a command by the end.

Finally reaching my goal, feeling my watch vibrate with the news that I had reached kilometre number ten, there was no elation. Not yet. I felt physically sick. Weary and beat up. I stumbled home on matchstick legs that had no more to give, and set about recovering. Only later, the next day in truth, did the seed of accomplishment grow into the tree of fullness and satisfaction. It had cost me but I had levelled up. I was a guy who had run 10k.

My first half-marathon wasn't nearly so dramatic. After running for years at this point, I decided to see if I could do what in my mind was the ultimate running goal. A half-marathon. Some of you might be thinking right now that that's not the ultimate running goal, it literally has half in the title, and fair play. However for whatever reason I've never felt compelled to try for a full marathon. The half just feels right, long enough to certainly be a challenge and require a good amount of training, but also without it taking over my life. I like running, but I like other things too.

So I set myself the goal and then let someone else decide the date, because in 2012 I signed up to do the half in the Melbourne marathon.

Running with others, in a large group like that, I'd learned, was a different kind of run. It's easier to get out of your head, think less about what's in the tank and just go as the path passes beneath you. It's easy too to stay motivated, just pick a person, stay at their pace, and if you overtake them, do it again until you find someone you can shadow to keep yourself going. And that's how that run went. Compared to the ten I had done years earlier, it was easy. Enjoyable. It was a nice sunny day and the city had been closed off in parts to accommodate the run and so I enjoyed a view I'd never get otherwise, and before too long I was heading for the finish line.

Following that, I ran a half marathon most years. Until covid, when I stopped running.

Stopping something is a unique experience. It is defined by absence. It's putting something down that you had been carrying for so long that you forgot you were even carrying it and the lack of its weight makes you feel buoyant and light. I would usually run in the mornings and so suddenly I had all this time in the morning. I felt rich with it, even though during that period time was really all we had.

But after a while the light feeling left. Soon, I felt heavy. It's that strange truism that while exercise feels like it should drain you of energy, more often than not it gives you energy, and so as weeks and then months passed without me running, I began to feel more and more lacklustre. Stopping one thing made me want to stop other things to regain that light feeling I had had. It's a downward spiral, a slightly seductive one, which can lead to you doing nothing at all.

The counter? Beginning again.

It can take a while to realise and reconcile with the fact that you can begin again. When we make a decision, we like to think of it as final and finite. We have planted a flag in the ground and there it shall stay for time immemorial. But nothing in this universe is truly final and finite, and certainly not our decisions. They are instead flimsy and flexible, and hurrah for that I say because beginning again, wether reversing a decision or just deciding to try one more time, is one of the greater things a person can do. Admittedly there is a freedom to stopping, to putting something down that you'd be carrying for so long. But I think equally there's a freedom in beginning again, in realising you don't have to wait for the right time, or keep sticking to a failing schedule. You can simply begin again.

So, what is the process? In some ways beginning again requires great levels of self delusion, but I don't say that as a negative, in fact I say it as a positive. As a writer, I have learned, you have to be well versed in self delusion. Every day you need to sit at your desk (or more often for me, stretched out on the couch in my study) and write words you convince yourself that one day someone other than you will want to read, pay to read ideally, and who will choose to read your words over all the other words that have been written, are being written, and will be written. That in their finite time on this planet they will choose to spend some of it reading what you have wrote.

Self delusion. But a good kind, because it means you have written, which is a very good thing, and it is only self delusion up until the point that one other person puts up their hand and says, 'I'll give it a read.'

Self delusion in beginning again is firstly convincing yourself that this time will be different. That while it didn't work out the first time (or second, or third, or thirtieth, or three hundredth), you're willing to begin again fully expecting a different outcome. Which, much like writing, is only self delusion until you have proved it to be true.

I am a firm believer in beginning again no matter how many attempts lie in your wake. That number we can class as N, and by doing so the actual number becomes meaningless. Because it is. There is only this latest one, this current attempt, the only true living and remaining try.

So, I began again.

And I was starting from zero. As soon as I headed out I could feel all that I was lacking, all that my body had given up as I told it day after day that it was no longer necessary. I was back to a 3k circuit I did in fits and starts. I had gotten used to my body having more but now when I reached for it, it wasn't there.

But that didn't matter. That's part of beginning again, realising and accepting that those aren't just words but truth, I was beginning again, which meant I had to start from the beginning.

So I did. I found a running program online and starting ticking off days and runs. At first it was a series of slow one minute jogs intersected with walking. Then that eventually built until once again I could complete that 3k circuit without stopping. It didn't have the same level of jubilation as the first time round, but it also wasn't without satisfaction.

It could be easy to feel like a failure, to look at all I had lost and desperately try to get it back as quickly as possible like some giant control z. But instead, I think it's better to look at beginning again as a victory. Because it's still better than the alternative. It's still you trying. It's acknowledging that something is hard and challenging and doing it anyway, no matter how many attempts it takes ,or if you will ever even achieve the end result, whatever that may be.

I got back up to running a 5k, quicker this time too I should note, I hadn't lost quite as much as I had initially thought. Then I got that up to seven, then eight, then ten, then twelve.

I turn forty this year in November. For my birthday, I'm planning to run a half-marathon. I began training for it last year, week by week edging my runs longer and longer. Then summer came around with it's hot days, and social engagements, and I missed a run here, and another run there. I was also stopping to walk within the runs more than I liked, always running the required distance but not with the level of overall completion I was wanting.

So, I began again. I restarted my training. Mapping out days and distances, determined to complete them all.

Then, a niggle, a spike of pain in the back of my right ankle. One that only flared up in the morning or if I had been lying down for a while, but one that made me hobble until I managed to walk it out. I slowly realised it had been there a while and wasn't going away on it's own. Achilles tendinopathy. Micro tears in the muscle. The cure, as my physio told me, is to strengthen it. A series of stretches and exercises to day by day make it stronger.

So, I'm beginning again…again. Still ticking off runs and working toward that half marathon. I'm currently back up to running 10k.

The impetus for this Stray Thoughts was Stray Thoughts, this podcast/blog. The last time I release an episode was in September last year. There has been a full six months between that episode and this one.

It's been an interesting six months. Last year had its challenges, and so I needed to stop. I put this down, along with a few other things. As mentioned, that's the other side to beginning again, stopping. Sometimes it happens through neglect, but other times it's a necessary legitimate choice. When I gave myself runners knee years ago, the only cure was stopping.

So Stray Thoughts went on an unconscious hiatus. The truth is, I didn't decide to stop, it just kind of happened. I even tried to start again. I wrote the beginnings of three other Stray Thoughts, but at the time I just didn't have it. I wasn't ready to begin again.

Then, eventually, I was. I found myself missing these missives to myself. Missed the practice and the clarity these brain dumps brought. Missed the recording and choosing music and putting them out into the world, never really knowing if anybody was listening but still liking that they were out there. That I had created and shared a small part of myself.

And I like running. I ran 11k over the weekend. I did so without stopping.

I couldn't do that without beginning again. Granted, I could have done it if I had never stopped running, but life doesn't work that way. Things will get in the way, whether that's depression, work, injury, family commitments, a personal tragedy, or a global one, like a pandemic. Things happen, habits stop. But when they do you can always begin again.

Thank you so much for reading these Stray Thoughts and until next time, thanks for still being here as I begin again.