Juneathon 2013 Day 1 - A good slapping

Juneathon 2013 Day 1 - Run - 3.5km Time - 19m

Don't just stand there - spread your wings

As everyone knows June is the month where you exercise everyday, supposedly as a form of fun. I should thus be leaping out of bed with a spring in my step and a song on my lips, looking forward to seeing the rosy fingers of morn’s early morning light, hearing the chirruping of birds, and sensing the fresh air passing over my skin... But somehow it is not quite like that - something is a little bit wrong.

For the past month or so I have lost my mojo and have not felt like doing anything much at all. It started (as it usually does for me) with a chest infection that hung around and left me feeling lethargic. lIt’s as if my world has been smothered in a soft grey blanket. “Don’t go out.” a voice would tell me “There is no point. You will only be disappointed in both your lack of speed and stamina.” 

Oh that siren song! It promises to protect your comfort and shield your esteem but it actually does the reverse. It closes down your world and leaves you with less.

I recently saw the film ‘A Late Quartet’, which is about the crises faced by a well established string quartet when their cellist discovers he is in the early stages of Parkinson’s and will shortly have to retire. In one scene he participates in an exercise class with other suffers. The instructor explains that the disease constrict movements making you take shorter and shorter steps and limiting your gestures, physically turning you in on yourself. To fight against this she forces them to stretch and move, to fight to expand their range of movement. 

Never mind the music, or the emotional angst and tangled relationships that drove the story - it was this small tangental scene that rang some bells in my head. I might not have Parkinson’s but the mind can play similar games and box you in. You need to shake yourself out of the stupor. It is my hope that Juneathon will do just that. I am looking upon it as a slap round the chops combined with a firm injunction to “Stop being pathetic!”. 

 In fact I took the idea so seriously I was up at 4:45 and out running by 5:00. (Who said I couldn’t be hard core?). OK it was not very far and I felt a bit rubbish at the end but that’s beside the point. It is the intention that matters.