Bumps in the road

Recovery has been a bit wobbly of late. After the initial few weeks of the novelty of eating better and the almost immediate gains in energy has worn off, it's really hard to keep up the momentum to keep driving forwards. I can see I'm still improving physically just by looking back in my training log; 8 weeks ago, any form of exercise resulted in several days afterwards stuck on the sofa unable to do much else. I was just exhausted. Now I'm able to put in 5-6 decent days of training a week, preferring to do it in the mornings so I have the afternoons to rest up and recover. Today I set out to do another 13k, though actually miscalculated distances and ran 14k instead, but for the first time since I've started running again, it was incredibly laborious, and each km run felt like squeezing blood out of a stone. There was a point where I just sat down on a bench and cried, because I was frustrated and annoyed at myself and was acutely aware that my body was reminding me it's still not very well. Normally it's very much mind over matter and I can mentally push through the physical barriers. But today, my body said "no".

I think a lot of my issues today are just that I'm exhausted. I don't cope with rest days very well, so recently I've been ignoring them and training anyway. I really do understand that the body needs rest, and that rest days are a positive part of training, but to my anorexic brain, rest days are idleness, and idleness means I don't deserve to eat. A few days of skipped meals result in what happened today; a bad run. Too many skipped meals leads to relapse, and while I yearn to restrict again, I know I need to keep going down the recovery path. I have my first appointment with the ED dietitian this week, as I genuinely don't have a clue how to eat "normally". I'm hoping she will be able to advise me on how to fuel for a run safely, in a way that will enable me to perform as well as possible whilst not making me gain any weight. I also hope she will be able to help me with eating on the days when I don't train, so I feel safe to rest whilst still eating. Oh heck, I think I'm counting on her to be a miracle worker!!!

But while I battle with recovery and all the crap that that brings along the way, I have recently discovered that some people actually have a problem with the fact that I'm trying to get better. It appears that some people only like me while I'm seriously ill and at death's door, because as soon as I start doing better they drop me like a hot stone, defriending me on Facebook and that sort of thing. Are people really that pathetically shallow, that they only find someone interesting when there's a life and death drama to be had? If I was to relapse again would they come traipsing back, wanting a piece of the action once more? It makes me think of when I first arrived in Nottingham when I started university; my popularity massively soared after I was attacked, with a particular group of people being all over me, wanting to say they were friends of the raped girl and therefore in the know of all the gossip. I was dropped by them after about a week when one moaned to me that I wasn't "over it", only 5 days after the incident. I felt rubbish about it then and I feel rubbish about it now. But, as a good friend of mine said, who does it make look bad? Certainly not me. Time to cast off the dead wood and get any negative people out of my life. If I get ill again, I almost certainly won't survive. And my gorgeous children need me in their lives now, and for many years to come.

Looking forward, I have 4 weeks until the Nottingham 10k, and 7 weeks til Ramathon. Tomorrow I'm meeting someone that I've been chatting to online for a while, and next Sunday's long run will be spent in the company of my dear friend Sarah at Elvaston country park. The best thing is schools go back tomorrow so I get a break from the bickering! Happy days!!

Pictures from Wollaton deer park