Anything is possible

It was day 591 this morning, which is quite exciting.

600 consecutive days, which I should complete on 23rd August, all things going to plan, feels like quite a big milestone.

After my fairly downbeat post on Friday, this morning I had a really nice (slow obviously) run to pick up the car, which we left at a friend's house after having dinner there, and going slightly over the alcohol threshold whereby it was safe to drive.

Anyway, rather than go the most direct route I chose the more scenic one, down unmade roads, across the Tunbridge Wells Common and through a couple of small parks, which took me just over 2 miles (long distance for me these days).

Despite the slowness of my pace and the niggle in my knee, I felt terrific.

I remembered this morning why it is that I run, and how important it is to my life.

I just had the feeling while I was running that anything is possible. It's something that running gives me probably more than anything else.

I couldn't put a price on that.

Slowly does it

It's been a very long time since I last recorded my progress, thoughts and challenges around my Mile Each Day experiment.

I'm still going, although not strong, at least without a break, having completed day 589 today.

It's all been quite frustrating as the damage I did to my left knee way back in May is still with me, if anything worse now than it was in the first few weeks after I hurt it.

So I'm plodding on, doing my minimum mile-and-a bit, very slowly every day.

I'm just waiting for some physiotherapy that should be starting in the next few weeks.

Aren't questions amazing?

Today was day 552 of running at least a mile every day.

I heard, second hand, of a commentator who said that we all talk about weight loss as a simple equation of not eating more calories than we burn, and discussions tend to concentrate on how we can achieve that.

However we don't look at why it is that we do that. After all, no animals, other than domesticated ones, put on weight due to eating more than they burn.

So what caused us to start eating, and in fact generally consume, more than we actually need?

Have we lost the ability to tell when we reach that magical tipping point that is "enough"?

How do you know when it's enough?

What makes us thrive and excel, and can that become too much?

What's the measure there?

Is it happiness?

Is there such a thing as happy enough?

What happens if you have more than enough happiness?

At what point do you go past happiness into something else?

What are the happiest moments of my life?

How could I have made the happiest moments of my life even happier?

What makes me happy every day?

Aren't questions amazing?

A leg up

After my musings in my last post on the incredible healing ability of our bodies, it's only fitting that my own body should tell me that it needs a bit of help and support for it to facilitate its own healing.

I finally had to admit that I may need to add an extra ingredient in addition to my daily run following a run with my club colleagues last night where I became more and more aware of having to almost drag my left leg around with me.

It was actually even worse this morning when I managed a glorious seventeen minutes to complete one mile. I even gave up on the extra "bit" and walked the last bit home.

I put it all down to an incident about a month ago when, having locked my house keys inside the house, I had to remove a very small window and climb through it. Whilst manoeuvring my way through said window, at one point I had all my weight on my weaker left leg (previous cartilage and ligament football injury), with my other leg still pointing up through the window.

It was at this point that my left leg gave way under me. I appeared to wrench it somewhat and it hasn't been quite the same since.

So I will continue with my mile a day "therapy" but I have decided to also obtain some expert assistance.

All may become clearer early next week. Hopefully!

Enjoying the ride

I seem to have fallen out of the habit of writing my blog lately.

I'm still running though, and I completed my 543rd consecutive day of running at least a mile this morning.

My thoughts have been on both the fragility and also the miracle of life in the past twelve or so hours.

Last night I heard from my mum that one of her best, and oldest, friends passed away yesterday, and then on top of that I witnessed our adopted cat pounce on and proceed to devour a bird.

On the miracle side of things, I watched a recording of the last programme in the excellent BBC series "Inside The Human Body" last night.

Watching this series has made me more aware of what a mind-blowing miracle we all are.

Michael Mosley, the presenter who trained as a medical student, said last night that doctor's can't actually heal people, all they are able to do is facilitate the human body's natural ability to heal itself.

It seems to always come back to the principal that we all have everything within ourselves already to heal ourselves, be successful and thrive. All we need is the occasional support and encouragement to enable us to draw on those amazing resources that already within us.

And while we're about it, we should feel amazed and awed by this miraculous and fragile thing called life that we are riding right now.