Today’s feel-good Monday song is Queen. Few bands make me feel as good as Queen do. What I like best is the wonder of Freddie’s flamboyant vocals and style compared with Brian May – who’s really one of those geeky guys who spend most of their time in their library or in their bedroom practising guitar and never playing. It’s almost like a science to him.
And my favourite Monday song from Queen?
Don’t Stop Me Now
It’s like a shot of Cuban expresso followed by a full-fat coke and a packet of Haribo sours. When I used to run a lot, I’d set this as my ipod track for about the end of the second hour, when I used to hit ‘the wall’. How did I ever run for two hours? I must have been bonkers! I got to the point where an hour didn’t seem very long at all and it just wasn’t enough. It used to give me great pleasure to just stick my ipod on and run – start off with some quick beats to get me going and then end up with some power tracks to push me through the wall. I used to feel like I could run for ever when I was listening to this track.
I could have, as well.
It was when I stopped that it all started hurting. Endorphins are great. Our body’s own opium to get you through pain. That’s why the running felt great and it didn’t feel so good after. It started with creaking Achilles’ tendons, then aching feet. Those first few steps when I’d get out of bed, I’d hobble around like an old lady – whether I’d been running the day before or not. I went to my doctor first. I’d explained the problem and then he said I’d got something called plantar fasciitis – the thing that holds the muscle and skin to the bone was aggravated on my feet. I got a podiatrist appointment with the NHS. He told me a) running was banned and b) I was to lose a third of my body weight. I weighed nine stone, so that would have been three stone, pushing me into severe anorexia. I’ve been seven stone and I was extremely ill. I was proud of being nine stone. It was a lot of muscle tissue. I’d started at eight stone when I started training, and I was still in the same dress sizes, just a stone heavier. No flab on me. Thunder thighs!
I cried for three days. No running. Then I realised the podiatrist was ridiculous.
I went to my trusted physio. He’s the only physio Freddie (Andrew Flintoff) will have, and the man is an absolute genius. I’d come back from Japan one time in absolute agony. I’d done the Nagano marathon course – mostly hilly terrain and one of the most demanding I’d done. It took me about three hours thirty – one of my longer marathon times – and then I’d spent four days walking everywhere in Tokyo. By the time it came to fifteen hours of sitting down for the return flight, I was in pieces. I got back and went straight to the physio – my hip flexors felt like they’d been tightened and would not release.
“Lie on your front,” he bossed me. Physios are the only people who ever get to boss me.
“But it’s my hip flexors.”
“Just lie on your front.” He started getting out the ultrasound and the heat lamp.
“My hip flexors are here…” I pointed, petulantly, to the aching part. Maybe I really thought he didn’t know where hip flexors were. Seven years of training and the man doesn’t know where hip flexors are.
“Do as you’re told.”
I did.
Twenty minutes later, I popped off that table like he’d given me new hip flexors. It was seriously like Jesus curing the lame. In fact, maybe Jesus was a physio. I tend to exaggerate, but I had been a cripple when I walked in, and twenty minutes later, I was walking, running even. Turned out it was a trapped nerve round my spine. He was the one responsible for getting a ‘malingering’ footballer back onto the pitch when no other physio could. Same problem.
So Much Love to that physio.
Anyway, he set me up with a great podiatrist who gave me orthotics and I continued to run for another two years. The man was David Beckham’s podiatrist when he was at Manchester United, and the hundred quid I paid for those orthotics was among the best one hundred quid I ever spent.
Two years later, not even physios can sort out stress fractures in feet. Only 18 months off my feet could do that. Unfortunately, I piled on the weight. Yes, running an hour a day for 4 days a week, and having a three hour run both weekend days – not such a good idea for legs, or for metabolism. And my feet still hurt. I walk like a grandma when I’ve been sitting down for a while, and I still can’t wear heels.
Anyway, Queen remind me of those fab days running out towards Horwich, days of sunshine and spring, of feeling A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.
Here’s my Much Love Monday Poem – it’s Edna St Vincent Millay – a precocious poet who’s one of my favourites for writing gushy, emotional poetry. Only the young write like this. She’s gets emotion though. Anyone who’s known death or heartbreak will feel this poem!
Sonnet II
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
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