It’s that “aha” moment, the precise point where you realise the meaning of what others have been saying for years. An epiphany, a revelation, an awakening. The moment the penny drops. It doesn’t happen every day, but on the odd occasion, and when it does there’s no going back – you cannot look at the ‘penny’ the same way.
A phrase you never quite grasped, or just felt cliche, suddenly takes on a whole new meaning. ‘Crying over spilled milk’ never rang so true than knocking over a bottle of hard-expressed breast-milk. ‘Blood runs thicker than water’ becomes more than just a saying when something awful happens and you call your parent or sister at 3am because you know their love is limitless. And when the loud obnoxious person at work gets their way and nobody else gets a fair hearing you see ‘the squeaky wheel gets the oil’ in a new light.
I’ve had a few penny-drops in my life – like when I discovered at nearly 30 that I have curly hair if I don’t brush it straight after a shower, or when I realised meditation actually works. A massive one was when I had my son and I finally got how much love my mum must have for me. The latest insight I have gained has been on my marathon training journey – that there are some things you have very little control over in life.
I’ve always believed that if you put in the effort, you put the hours in, you have the motivation, the willpower, the fight, you can achieve almost anything you set your mind to. You go to that 5.30am exercise class if that’s the only time that works, you work double shifts if you need to pay the bills, you stay up late every night to get your visa application together, you forgo alcohol on a Friday night for 7am Parkrun on the Saturday…I started off my training plan with this school of thought back in November. All I needed to do was put in the miles, don’t forget to stretch afterwards, eat well, keep up my Yoga and Pilates and I’d be ticking off those weeks on my plan. Throw in some vitamins and the odd sports massage and I’d be laughing. So when an old knee injury (from bad RPM form) reared it’s ugly head in the first week of training I tried to push through the discomfort and stick to the plan.
Fast-forward to Christmas and my knee was so sore I’d stopped running for a couple of weeks to give it a break – I’d hit it hard again in the new year. On my next 6km I took it steady and thought I’d had a break-through – if I ran 1 min per km slower than usual I’d be fine – easy does it. Next, I ran a super-slow 10km, but my legs felt heavy and uncomfortable the whole way. By the end of the run I had terrible pain up both my shins. Luckily, I had a physio appointment for my knee that day. The physio took one look at my legs and knew I was in trouble – shin splints! She gave me the advice I’d feared – that I would have to stop running for a while, until I’d strengthened my glutes and core. But what about the marathon? She said I should concentrate on other cardio in the meantime, until my legs recover. But there’s only 15 weeks to go. But I want this so bad. But I’m willing to put the effort in. But I’m fit and active. But I’m raising money for charity. But, but, but…
I spent my twenties working all week, drinking most weekends, going to the gym in the evenings, eating out a lot – I worked hard and played hard. I never had an injury. My body did what I told it to. If I ate less for two weeks I’d lose half a stone. Roll on ten years and I’m lucky if I lose a pound in a month, my joints ache, my shoulder clicks, I squint at this screen as I type – and I’m not even 40 yet! This revelation, that we have to look after our bodies more as we age has, naively, taken me by surprise. To be honest, I thought I was doing okay and living a well-balanced life, doing most of the right things. The thing that has knocked me sideways though is that we can seemingly out of nowhere get an injury and there’s no instant fix. We can of course strengthen this and stretch that to avoid these ailments, but when there’s been no prior issue from that activity you can’t always preempt what you should be doing – hindsight is evidently a good thing.
The penny dropped for me from a great big height these past weeks, that we are not in complete control of our bodies. Even with all the right mindset, gear, support and effort in the world we may get thrown a curve-ball and be sent a physical challenge we’ve never had to deal with before. Mine is relatively minor compared to what others are facing and I don’t feel I’d given much thought before, real thought, to the mental anguish those serious illnesses or injuries might cause someone – when the self you identify with is thrown into question, the adjectives you use to describe yourself no longer stick. This awareness has also unfolded from working with older people recently, in their 80’s and 90’s, who have both mental and physical diseases – from watching their daily struggles to come to terms with this.
You may be reading this in your 40’s or 50’s and thinking you feel as fit as a fiddle, but the truth is at some point in later life we’ll all feel a bit creakier, less nimble, more forgetful, clumsy, inflexible…this isn’t to be pessimistic, it’s just life – the humble truth. No one will get to 92 and feel the same as they did at 29.
I wasn’t prepared for marathon training to provoke a mini-mid-life-crisis in me, or to leave me feeling so powerless. I was expecting a rollercoaster of emotions, but to question my whole identity, my relationship with myself and others, I was not.
Humans are amazing, we can achieve the seemingly ‘impossible’, we can climb great mountains, run 2hr marathons, sail around the world single handed, walk on the moon, eradicate diseases, engineer fertility, invent the internet and electric cars…it feels as though anything you can imagine might one day exist. There are individual limits though, there are things we have very little immediate control over. Such as injuries and illnesses, and let’s take this big; for all our human ingenuity, we didn’t slow down our impact on the environment and now we’ll have very little control over major changes to our climate and habitat.
The one thing that an awakening does – the realisation there are some things we have little control over in life – it leaves you vulnerable. It opens you up to human kindness and support. It gives you the opportunity to achieve something in the face of adversity. It shows you that everyone has a different struggle they face each day. It helps you understand we are all in this together. It gives you hope.
So that’s how I start the next phase of my training plan for the London Marathon in April, with hope. Hope I can remain positive. Hope I can let people help. Hope I can adapt my exercises to accommodate my injuries. Hope I’ll be fit enough. Hope I’ll be healthy enough. Hope I will be at that start line.
Years ago, when arcade machines cost a penny, that penny would sometimes get stuck and you had to wait for the penny to drop for the machine to start working, to come to life. There’s a slight delay, but suddenly there’s a connect and a switch comes on. Excuse me, I think I just heard my penny drop.
the three free spirits. 