Rather impressively, I avoided boozing to go straight home on Friday after work, and went for a run. Almost as impressively, I thought I was taking it pretty easy but ended up doing 3 laps of the park / 8.5km in around 46 minutes, which is a fair pace, especially given the massive hill I had to wheeze up 3 times.
I don't feel particularly fit - I've a sharp pain in my chest at times that feels like I've been smoking too much; and still get out of breath quite quickly - but I seem to be faster at running than I was (I just get the same amount of knackered going fast as I did going slow). I'm not sure if the non-smoking has much to do with it - my 'quitting' iPhone app reckons my lungs are pretty much still as bad as ever - but if nothing else I'm pleased that this will be the first race I've done where I haven't been a practising smoker at the time. Even before the Reading half marathon last year, I fell off the wagon about 3 weeks before the race.
I'm now off the patches again, having only had one slip up during the 10 weeks of the programme (a sly cig with Jimeoin a couple of months ago). I don't feel particularly 'non-smoky' at the moment, but I have survived 5 days and one weekend without nicotine and the cravings haven't really been noticeable. I can quite easily imagine myself enjoying a cigarette, and that's the sort of mental effect it's having on me at the moment - I don't so much crave smoking, as suddenly think it looks like the most relaxing and enjoyable thing I could possibly do. I'm still managing to remind myself of the more minging aspects of it (coughing up phlegm and the like), so for now, I'm holding off on a relapse.
It does, however, mean that the British 10K will hopefully be the first race I've ever done which hasn't been celebrated with a post-finish fag. I'll survive.
No comments:
Post a Comment