The gift of a strong, healthy body

Erik-Lee makes it look easy, while I count my blessings

23.09.2014

Day 165

My late mother was born this day in 1919. She died in September 1990, having been diagnosed with ovarian cancer six months before. The chemotherapy saw her weight go down to about 70 pounds. I can remember her lying on her bed a couple of weeks before she died, marvelling at the sun on the late roses outside the window, glorying in the half hour without pain she could enjoy when the super strong pain killers were allowed to do their job without her throwing them up. She was allergic to morphine, which may have given her a few more such rare euphoric moments, when she smiled broadly and said

‘Do you know, lying here right now I feel like a normal, well person…I half believe I could get up right now and go for a walk around the garden…that would be the biggest treat. I can’t imagine I wasted all that time worrying about stupid things when being alive, not ill, is such a blessing.’

And the relevance of this to training seriously? When you’re cussing at the trainer (sorry, Erik) because you can’t get the speed ball coordination right (see above), when you’re angsty because your 5km times are ever slower and you can feel your middle jiggle when you jump, when your family are tsk-ing because you’re away another weekend to run a half marathon along a beach because you love it, and you can…that’s when you should remember how lucky you are that your heart beats strongly and your arms and legs work.

And that strong healthy brain, too. This morning I went to visit my godmother in a care home. She has dementia and has been sitting in a wheelchair, cushioned by incontinence pads and stifling central heating, since 2010. She plaintively asks for home, mummy and daddy and to go ‘upstairs’. Sometimes she adjust these requests, in more lucid moments, to ‘oh god, I just want to die!’ I wish I could help, instead, selfishly, I count the minutes until I can dive outside to my bike, breathe sweet London air (!) and freewheel down the hill. Visit over for another month.