A V shaped recovery

So it’s been a weird month...maybe a slight understatement! If I selfishly forget the wider world for a minute, personally this impacted me most with the cancellation of the Marathon Des Sables. After building up my running, fitness, mental strength and kit for the past 18 months by world cup final was cancelled. Needless to say this happened at the beginning of March before everything got really crazy! I found myself suddenly with a big hole, my running stopped, my motivation gone and therefore mentally and physically I went into a bit of a nose dive.

However, luckily for me, my personal recession was short lived and after a week of being a pretty horrible person to live with, I started to pick myself up again. I was very much helped by some serious perspective, one of my best buddies lost his brother at far too young an age. Then of course the Covid-19 situation got pretty serious. I also had Anna’s support, which all combined made me pretty quickly pull my socks up and return back to my usual positive ways.

Funnily enough the lock down is actually helping me get back to a fit state and actually better with more time to focus on non-running fitness (core, strength and flexibility work) as well. So I actually hope to come out the other side of this in a better place. Yes my runs are not quite as long but I go out frequently and most days do a couple of sets of exercise (only ever 1 out of the house obviously!).

I also decided to recognise what would have been my first day running MDS with an honorary marathon...in full gear...and a 6kg backpack! The first half marathon on the beautiful North Downs and the second half marathon around my communal flat gardens and car park! I got a few funny locks but it felt like a good personal challenge to complete.

I am also using this time to plan whats next, and this post will be swiftly followed by my next planned challenge (Covid-19 allowing!). First and foremost the challenge is something I think I need to do for myself to give myself the physical and mental stretch I was looking for in MDS. But I also hope I can use it to continue to raise awareness and potentially some more cash (appreciating that these are hard times for all I’ll probably focus on awareness) for mental health.

Thats all for now but watch out for news in the next couple of days of my next planned adventure...it will definitely be the hardest thing I have ever set out to do...and I probably have a 50% chance at best in achieving my ultimate goal...but if you don’t aim high whats the point!

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/34afa7_ea9686b2f3a543a99819734b0cafe349/480p/mp4/file.mp4