The wall and treadmill incident

The term “hit a wall” is one I’ve heard many a times in convos with seasoned runners, and more often read about in magazines, but I’ve never had the foggiest idea what it actually meant, until Sunday that is.

My fabulously fit and fast next door neighbour joined me on my 7km run on Sunday morning. The first 5kms were fantastic, I felt superb. And then, it literally was like I hit the proverbial wall. My muscles felt like they were made of lead and that they just didn’t want to work anymore. Being the stubborn Aries that I am, I kept saying just run it off Imo, just run it off! But then about a minute or so later, when my vision started going blurry and the road started to get awfully close to my face, I had no choice but to stop! All it took was a 300m walk and some deep breaths to get over it but man it was scary. We figured out that it must have been from not eating very well the night before or that morning for that matter – well that and the copious amount of red wine I might have had that weekend… But lesson learnt and now at least I know I guess…

So Tuesday rolled around and I thought I might enjoy a lovely calm, non-wall-hitting run. And if it hadn’t been for the fact that I happened to glance over at the runner on the treadmill next to me and see a guy I went out with once or twice - who then stopped calling, and now its weird - it really would have been great. I blushed – well would have if I wasn’t already blood red from the exercise - my stomach did a nauseating 180 flip, my fingers literally started to tingle too. I thought about glancing over and giving a casual nod in his direction, but I was sweating like a paedophile in a Barney suit and looking completely unpretty! So I decided to speed the hell up and get outta there. Luckily for me I did the fastest run ever, so I guess I should thank him actually after all.

Lessons learnt – eat properly before a long run, say no to that 7th glass of red vino if you want to run the next day and keep your cool on the treadmill so to speak.

Oh and t-minus 326 days and counting!