By T W Coombs
Firstly I have not completed a Marathon, Ultra Marathon, run
across the Sahara, nor have I scaled Everest as the title suggests. Far from
it, I am usually happy just to get twenty minutes of light jogging out of me
knees. That is if people still go
jogging, it seems to be that everyone just runs now, “going for a run”, “I am
runner”, so maybe I am now coming into my own runner prowess.
The triumph in the title is down to me running further than
I have ever run in my life and I had to think back before my knees were shot
out by playing Basketball. Now I have
not suddenly done a road race, the triumph in question is treadmill based,
mostly as it is cold this time of year and secondly it is more controlled and
softer on the joints and feet. I did
however run 6.62 miles in less than an hour.
To say I was over the moon was a complete understatement, I
felt like jumping up and down right there and then, but truthfully it was more
likely I would have just collapsed in a heap than the feet left the ground.
After 58 minutes of fighting through the pain I had done it, the goal I set
myself 3 weeks beforehand was complete.
Easier than I thought also, the furthest I had run the week before was
4.34 miles or 7km, so to run 10.66km was a miracle and one I certainly felt for
a week after.
You see whilst running I felt fit and confident, once I
stopped I was not out of breath and only the legs had any sign of fatigue. I stretched all my ligaments, muscles and
joints out for a good fifteen minutes and felt refreshed after a shower. Even the next day after a small amount of
movement felt perfectly fine. Then the
day after came and the "doms" were there with vengeance, my legs felt like two
giant Lead weights and I had to do five minutes of stretching to make them feel
like my legs. I felt okay for some time
until I hit the Gym on this day, my warm up consists of a quicker than normal
10 minute run. Now the only way to
describe the feeling was getting the pistons of an really old car up and
running. The slow moving of rust
breaking away and took a few minutes before my legs loosened up. Thankfully it was for only 10 minutes. It took a week before I was back to normal
and ready to do it all again, I only did a lighter run, jog, meander than a
full six miles, I did about 4 instead.
I do still feel though that I have achieved
something monumental, even though for many it is nothing, to me it is like
hitting the summit.
