I ran this morning. I know it sounds like no big deal especially if you’re on Strava, Nike+ or any of the other 238 apps I use to track my runs, because then you know that I’ve actually been running quite often since I became unemployed self-employed. But it’s kind of a big deal because, for the first time in about eight months, nothing hurt when I ran.

I got up early even though it was Saturday (now that I’m unemployed self-employed, differentiating between weekdays and weekends is a social convention I no longer feel the need to abide by). I had a coffee, half of a piece of toast with nothing and half of a piece of toast with peanut butter on it (what actually happened was that I felt too lazy to put something on my toast and started eating it and then realised halfway through that having toast with nothing is just terribly sad, even by my standards, so I put my big girl pants on and sorted it out with peanut butter).

(Peanut butter is the duct tape of foods. There’s nothing it can’t fix, even if we’re talking about a disgrace like a half eaten piece of toast. But anyway, this is a parenthesis about a parenthesis and I don’t want this to get too complex so I should probably get back to the main topic now.)

Gratuitous cat photo because it’s Caturday and this is the internet. Zara is perfecting her stretching poses. She’s a fitness nut.

I had half a banana in the car on my way to this run, which is a bad idea if it’s a stupidly hot day and you’re going to leave half of a banana in the car for the next three hours. Just a little life tip for you, because I’m all about adding value to these posts.

I then started running the same way I’ve started every single one of my runs in the last eight months or so: I had some random overly upbeat song blasting in my ears (could have been Lady Gaga, yes, but this blog is not a place for judgement) and I put one foot in front of the other waiting for some part of my body to start screaming (usually my IT Band or my shin, because I’m a proper runner with proper runner injuries).

Gaga wasn’t even halfway through preaching about my right to live however I please when I started noticing something weird going on: the fact that nothing was going on.

For the first time since about March, not one single part of my body was hurting or complaining about anything. I had enough water and plenty of energy (after eating a gel for the first time ever before a run, which appeared to have taken away my usual desire to give up a couple of hundred metres into the run). But no, oh no, not this time. This time I was all like “yeah, Gaga, you tell ‘em!” and things only really started hurting a bit when I got halfway up the first hill. But when I say hurting, I mean on the inside, in my heart (aww), because I remembered I hate running uphill. Still no physical pain. Like, none.

Are you as weirded out by this as I am? I kind of hope so but, if not, here’s a video compilation of dogs acting like humans. Animals acting like humans is like the 17th weirdest thing there is.

(I didn’t actually watch the video so it might be completely crap, but I did Google it for you when I could have been doing other stuff like eating ice cream or learning cross-stitch so I do hope you appreciate my efforts. And now I went off-topic again, awesome. Potential employers, don’t you all start calling me at once.)

I ended up running about 22km (FIST PUMP!) without even a hint of pain throughout the whole thing.

All I could complain about was the amount of hills (most of them were actually just gentle inclines but one man’s gentle incline is another man’s Everest and any man’s gentle incline is definitely a mountain by my running standards). And also, the sun frying my skin. I’m not one to exaggerate but that was like the hottest day ever since whenever the last hottest day was. At least.

I took an inception-type selfie to show the weird running singlet tan lines I’m currently sporting because of all this running in the sun deal. Then I went ahead and posted it here. NEW LOW.

But, not sure I mentioned, no pain. Eight months of running with pain every single time (it usually disappears during the run but it’s normally always there at some point) makes you forget what it’s like to run pain-free. For the sake of reference, eight months is around about the gestation period of a polar bear or a hippopotamus (another little nugget of wisdom for you). My point is that 8 months is a really long time to do anything, including running in pain. I sometimes wonder how the hell I didn’t just give it all up and channel my energy into a different hobby like Jenga or something. I guess the reason I didn’t give up during these 8 months is a little bit related to how shit I am at Jenga but also probably really good evidence of how much I love running.

Little problem, though: since I don’t feel like I had to tough it out and get over any pain this morning, the whole run ended up being pretty uneventful – less than ideal when you want to write about it for your running blog. I mean, what else am I supposed to tell you about it? I stopped at a dairy and had a Coke halfway through (Coke Zero, because I’m obviously all about healthy choices). But that’s it, really. No major adversity to overcome or anything. Just a nice long run to start off the weekend. I guess I got so used to bitching about pain I’m a little lost about what to tell you about my next few runs. Am I going to even have anything to tell you? Who knows.

Actually, I got a pretty decent sized blister so I’m sure you’ll hear from me again soon.