Friday July 28

Day 1 – The dog magnet

The project: A month-long stint of pounding the fields and lanes of Sussex in my hapless and ill-advised attempt to complete a quintessentially English 5k race between two local pubs. Yes, a pint of beer awaits every finisher!

Dear Reader,

‘You’re not built for running.’

‘WHAT?’

‘We’re not. Running is damaging. Remember all those injuries? You broke your FOOT, and before that, well, you couldn’t walk without pain for WEEKS after the BM10k!’

Well, he had a point. With my ‘all or nothing’ approach to life, I’d thrown myself into my new passion – running – in my early forties, and doing too much, too hard and too soon had taken its toll.

Still, today was the day for my running relaunch. I rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a pair of athletic capri pants. I’m not as toned as I used to be, and, well, let’s just say that it’s a good thing that activewear is made to stretch. 😳

I was so excited to get my legs working that I plain forgot to wash my face until after I’d put my trainers on. Bounding back upstairs to the bathroom I was glad I’d remembered, figuring that if I ended up needing emergency care at least I’d be presentable.

As I walked across the second field towards the lane where I would start to jog gently, a large dog approached me, barking, and jumped up at me. I don’t know what it is about dogs: they seem to sense that I’m not a dog person, I’m afraid of them, and I go out of my way to avoid them. It is one of life’s great ironies that the dog averse are in fact the greatest magnets for the creatures.

Sporting two large muddy paw prints, one on each thigh, I started to move. Walk - jog - walk - jog - jog - walk - walk - walk. I had no prescribed rhythm, but just moved the way I wanted, with stops and starts and pauses. Reader, getting back into this game of running meant starting SLOW.

After looping around the lanes and back in civilisation again in the outskirts of the village I neared a woman with three dogs. She kindly stood aside for me to pass.

‘No, it’s okay!’ I told her. ‘It’s about time for me to walk now!’ With that, a knee-high terrier flung itself at me, clambering with its muddy paws up my leg.

‘DORA!!!!!!!!!!’ And then, to me, ‘Sorry. She’s just friendly.’

Well, if that was Dora being friendly, I hope I never make an enemy of her.

Dogs aside, I enjoyed my run, getting home just as a heavy rain shower came along. Opening the front door I found the envelope I’d left at the bottom of the stairs containing my entry form and fee for the 5k.

‘Go on!’ I said out loud to an empty house. ‘Do it NOW.’

Throwing on my rain jacket I locked the front door again and walked down to the High Street in the rain. I pushed the damp envelope through the Race Director’s letterbox.

Looks like I’d better get used to running…

Love,

Rebecca

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The Jog Log Stats – Day 1
Session: alternating walk/run
Distance: 4.02 km
Duration: 39:48 minutes
Average speed: 6.1 kph

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Thank you for reading my Jog log!

Follow my month-long stint of pounding the fields and lanes of Sussex in my attempt to complete a quintessentially English 5k race between two local pubs.

I’m not sending these posts out by e-mail, but you can always check in with how things are going by clicking Jog log 🏃🏻 in the top navigation bar on the web browser version of my Substack homepage.