Good Continuation of Retreat.

 

Good Continuation of Retreat.

Since I am writing this at a time when, the world has been unrecognizable for a while. I cannot help thinking about the great day of adventure, excitement and personal challenge that I would have been having, had all gone according to my plan that was set sometime last autumn/early winter when I entered an interesting new event on the Istrian Peninsula in Croatia, Poreč, to pinpoint it correctly. I spoke about it yesterday when it would have been the pre-race registration and bike racking day. Plava Laguna, Ironman 5150 triathlon.

I find myself even more hung out to dry today since by this time I would have completed the swim and might be out on the bike leg or maybe started the run as I tap away at the keys of my computer instead. Even though I am trying hard not to, I feel a little sad to have missed the race. I have never been to Poreč but I have investigated it at length. It looks heavenly in all the photos and I have read about the town on travel pages of the internet. It would have been a short holiday too. Steve and I would have driven there and probably rented a holiday apartment, driven around the bike course and jog-walked the run route. We would have met new people and made new friends, which always happens at triathlon events we have friends all over the world from this splendidly friendly sport of ours

This morning Steve and I did a few TV classes, a Has-Fit stretch class for 30 minutes then a Tai Chi set, then 2 x Qigong before doing a couple of hours on our Turbo trainers watching West Wing. We enjoyed the box set years ago and thought it was long enough to get up through the lock down period since it was about 1990 something when the series were first on. We are enjoying it just as much this time round, it was a long time ago.

When we had finished all that, I face time called my daughter because I thought it would cheer me up, instead of mooning about over spilt milk as it were. You don’t have to be that bright to understand that at my age, a year is a very long time and that is what it is until the race takes place on the exact same weekend in 2021. Pretty much every event we were looking forward to has been cancelled or postponed.

Yes I know that it is the same for everybody and I know that it is much worse for some other people. My daughter and her husband did cheer me up chatting away looking at a little picture of each other. I have only seen her in the flesh once since the beginning of March even though they live only a couple of miles away. We usually have a dinner catch up once a month when we can sit opposite each other to chatter and although it is spontaneous chit chat on Face time its not quite the same as visiting and getting a hug and a big Mwah-Mwah, as we embrace. Jacqueline has had a bad back for a while and like me has Asthma and other annoying regular problems to cope with which is why her husband Martin was been lumbered with all doing shopping for us.

The lock down has taken its toll I believe, no matter how hard you work at trying to stay positive whilst not being able to travel freely and go out to do whatever you do to relax. In our case, Jakki, Steve and I would have been going to the Littlehampton Wave several times a week, enjoying the amazing facilities that would be on offer at this super sport centre that hadn’t been open quite one year when Lockdown reared it head in the face of the dreaded Covid19. 

 Steve and I have for the past thirty years, been to swim four times a week and my daughter goes to fabulous Gym that looks out on the sea as you work out. Jacqueline has a new HUUB Wetsuit that she has not had the opportunity to try out with the new sport of paddle boarding she took up late last summer. Steve is keeping an eye on the tide and weather notices in the hope that we can get in the sea soon although it has been cold for an old bird like me, he has his eye on it.

It will be interesting to hear what exactly our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who was recently hospitalised having caught the disease himself, has to say this afternoon when he speaks to the nation once more. I find it hard to think that when there are so many deaths daily that much will change for a while. I think a good month more, would be a safe measure but some people are too eager to be free and for many, their lust for normal life could start a second wave, though I hope to goodness a little sense remains.

 Having been so careful myself and given up my normal life for over two months, it would be terrible to see this dreadful virus given a second chance. Though I do fully understand how hard it must be stuck in a tower block with young children or heaven forbid, teenagers! It is unthinkable. We are lucky to have a house, small but enough space for the two of us, with a little bit of garden, where I have planted a few vegetables, not many though, our garden is very small but everything is something, just to help us through difficult times.

 Meanwhile, I can see many more runners than usual going past the front of our home and imagine that some are the ones who attended the gym regularly or maybe some, stuck suddenly indoors, have just started running. I hope that they find it satisfying and continue with the new found fitness attached to a regular sport.

 I had a message response on WhatsApp from a friend who wished me a good continuation of my retreat. Yes, I suppose that is what this time has been. Not without good reason though, and I have no intention of throwing all that effort away too quickly.