It feels great to feel normal.
No more am I hijacked by my thyroid gland, which was swinging me from a state of high alert to one of total slump, affecting both body and brain. Fingers crossed, it looks like we have the correct dose established and I feel absolutely great – I just feel normal!
I used my sense of normality to revisit the Irish Runner Paced Miles. Now, I could give a blow-byblow account of the evening, but that just wouldn’t make for a very interesting read – you’d have had to have been there. So let’s just say that the buzz of the Paced Miles was fantastic. It was buzzing at number pick-up, buzzing at the warm-up, buzzing while we were running and buzzing while we were cheering on the other runners. As if that wasn’t buzzing enough, I got myself a postillness Paced Mile PB, so the buzz lasts well beyond the night of the run. And I wasn’t the only one buzzing, we were all buzzing – it was a brilliant event, and all for a fiver. As soon as I came home, I signed up for the next one on 22nd March.
Then I had the utmost pleasure to run the inaugural Bushy Dublin parkrun in Terenure. What a privilege it is to run there. I’m a Terenure native and as a kid have played in Bushy Park’s playground, rolled down the hill, fed the ducks, climbed the trees, played tennis, attended open air concerts. Then I brought my own kids and their cousins to do many of the same things when they were of an age. No surprise then, that it is one of my favourite parkrun routes (I’ve now done nine different parkrun venues and hope to add to that tally in the coming months). Again, my new-found state of normality resulted in a post-illness second best, only very slightly off a season’s best.
I have to admit, that at one point my enthusiasm got the better of me and I did something that was somewhat unparkrun-like. I apologised and was quickly forgiven, while I was also invited to volunteer as penance for my transgression. So the following Saturday, I found myself marshalling at Bushy Dublin parkrun, and had a lovely, lovely time. Bushy Dublin parkrun – I’m loving it. I’m having a bit of trouble with painful hip flexors, so I haven’t run for the past two weeks. Instead, I’ve volunteered at our athletics club and at parkrun and have religiously done my stretches and physio. I’m seeing a great improvement, but I’m saving myself for certain races that I’ve already booked.
Tomorrow I head to Naas for an athletics clubs road race. Next weekend I have the St Patrick’s Festival 5k as part of the Lord Mayor’s Challenge. Indeed, it seems that I’ve a race nearly every weekend for March and April – so many races, it’s great. This time last year was when I started to notice that I was walking for 5ks, something I had never done, and was struggling to finish any of my races. By early April my Grave’s Disease had been diagnosed and there followed a rollercoaster of poor health while we got it under control. So my completing these races will bring a closure to a year that has been somewhat rough and tough. Woohoo!! It feels great to feel normal!
