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Back on track?

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Four weeks ago I did a ten mile run. It was hideous. I stopped. I started. I stopped. I stretched. I started. I stopped. I readjusted clothing. I started. I stopped. I whinged. I started. I stopped. I moaned about hills. I started. I stopped. I started. I ran the final three miles home with no problems. Except for the fact that my hip hurt, my ankles hurt and my knees hurt. In fact, I struggled to settle into the run because I wasn’t managing to weight bear properly on my right knee. I was plodding on like a limping cart horse. This was the run that made me seek out a physio, become well acquainted with my foam roller and take a week off running.

Today I ran the same route. It was ace.

In the intervening 4 weeks, I have been foam rolling at least once a day and have been back to the physio, who has deemed me to be rolled enought to be given corrective exercises to help adjust my wonky pelvis. He was going to show me four of them, but after demonstrating three, he judged (correctly) that three were enough for my little brain. I’ll be waving my legs around in front of the telly for another three undignified weeks and then back to physio.

Today’s run was hard in parts. I felt weary after four miles and I had to focus to get myself up all of the hills (but I have never managed all of the hills without walking before today). My face was so red that it was less of a complexion and more of a cry for help. I don’t really care. Knowing that I can do 10 miles has put me in a much better frame of mind for the Folkestone Half in (gulp) five weeks.

Undulating, but good preparation for the Folkestone hill.

A rainy run for Paula

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Like many people, I spent last Monday staring at the rolling news coverage of the rioting last week. On Tuesday, I was dazed to read an email from Adele sharing the sad news that one of our committed Athoners, Paula Butler, had died suddenly while out running. It seems so very wrong.

Old Bag Running, abradypus, Fortnight Flo, Cake of Good Hope, Insert Clever Running Pun Here and Shazruns have already taken up Adele’s suggestion that we each dedicate a run to Paula, so here is mine.

Tonight was three miles down the canal, in the rain, with the excellent company of my very good mate. The run itself was nothing spectacular, but one of the best.

A goal post

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After England had beaten India on Saturday, I found myself listening in awe to the post-match interviews on TMS. The gist of the a lot of what the players talked about was yes it’s nice we’re number one in the world, but come Monday we’ll be setting our next goal. I think it was Swanny who described how they’d sat down and plotted their way up to that position, identifying goals that would take them one step nearer to the desired outcome. I’m rubbish at setting goals and can’t imagine the mindset and confidence that goes into plotting world domination.

In the spirit of trying, I set a goal for today’s run – Run 8 miles without crying or either leg dropping off.

I even did good goal setting by ensuring that this was a SMART goal – was it…
SPECIFIC? Yes, definitely.
MEASURABLE? Miles confirmed the 8 miles, crying was a simple yes/no and basic counting skills covered the leg goal.
ACHIEVABLE? I thought so, I’d done 6.5 with Ginge last week, even with some dented confidence it was doable.
RELEVANT? Well Folkestone is in 6 weeks, so yes, running further is slightly relevant at this point.
TIME-BOUND? Yes, if I didn’t do it today, I suspect I never would. In the event, I was home in tome to listen to The Archers.

Hurrah! I achieved a goal! I feel ever so proud.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

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Do you remember, back in June, I had a week or so when my running felt fantastic? I was fleet of foot and light of tread, I bounded, cantered and gamboled through the streets without a care in the world. I remember it, but unfortunately my legs have completely forgotten and now seem to think that they are made of lead. Very achy lead.

On Sunday, I did 6 miles with Ginge. It wasn’t pleasant (except the company) and I needed all of his best cajoling and encouragement to get home. I put this down to a training phenomenon I like to call ‘clumping’. Clumping occurs when you skive/weasel/postpone a planned session, but then end up with all your sessions clumping into a short space of time. Last week I ran on Tuesday, slept through Thursday morning’s allocated slot, chose to ignore Thursday evening’s replacement slot and ended up running Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I know that I do this during the Athons, but I like to think that I’m trying to work harder at the moment.

On Monday I rested. It was nice.

On Tuesday, I gulped and hacked out 10 miles with Ginge. Poor Ginge has no inclination to run a half, but still accompanies me – he’s great. He’s also bloody annoying, because he does it with a lot less effort than I do. It was grumpy, painful and bloody hard work. I struggled to find a rhythm, pausing after a mile because it felt as if someone had fused my ankle bones together, then my legs felt heavy, then my dodgy knee made me trot in an awkward fashion, then I was too hot, then it started raining and I was too cold, then my legs went heavy again, then my feet hurt… This continued for, oooh, seven miles before I actually found myself settling into it.

I suspect that some of this was all in my head – the route contained two hills that I have failed in the past, I was nervous about hitting double figures and it was Tuesday bloody night. Some of it was in my legs though – the niggles that have lurked during Juneathon seem to have all starting shouting for attention at the same time. I’ve thought for a while that my knee was flaring up (anterior pain around my patella) but have been ignoring it because deep down I know that the inevitable solution will be rest and I don’t want to rest (I realise the incredible stupidity of this approach).

On Wednesday, I went to yoga. I was apprehensive about going because I don’t trust my knee in flexed weightbearing positions. I also fancied a night on the sofa. I sought advice from twitter, followed the wise words of @GlasgowOsteo and tried some massage, which seemed to do the trick for a bit (I ran up and downstairs without wincing) and survived yoga.

This morning, I was out of the door at the obscenely early time of 5.30. I am both proud and ashamed of this. I ran 5 miles. I felt as if someone had swapped my legs for someone else’s and they just wouldn’t work properly. I am frustrated.

Tonight, I have ordered a foam roller and continue to apply copious amounts of Deep Freeze to a vast acreage of my upper legs. I am fighting the urge to go out tomorrow morning just to see how it feels. I have also entered Jog Blog’s competition to win a set of Cram Alerts just in case I can’t make it home one day…

Here is a picture of a man guarding some cows at Jodrell Bank. Hopefully this offsets my pitiful whinging.

Just a walk in the park

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I’ve been aware of Parkruns for ages, “…if only there was one near me…” I would sigh. Then a few months ago I realised that there is one near me. Did I start going? Did I heck. So when I went down to the Juneathon picnic and Hels and Louise enthused about them, they  shot down pretty much all of my excuses and anxieties (the list is too long to go into, but I’m sure that you can guess the bulk of them).

Suddenly (and soberly) I heard my voice saying that yes, I would do one the weekend after. The plot thickened when the peer support/bullying/can’t-back-out-for-the-shame-of-it side of twitter emerged. If I would do one up north, Sue would do one at the same time in Cardiff.

Before I knew it, Saturday morning was dawning (I say dawning, it was belting down with rain, I’m just assuming there was a dawn somewhere behind all the clouds). I’d printed out my barcode and lovingly wrapped it in sticky tape to waterproof it, my bag was packed, my Garmin charged and my Parkrun picked. I had a choice of two runs, but opted for Pennington Flash because I know where it is and that at least removed one aspect of my stressing. With windscreen wipers swishing at full pelt, I set off down the M6, parked up and immediately I was intimidated by the sight in the car park.

Flash, I love you...

There was a large huddle of lean, athletic looking types in matching yellow tops. They looked very serious. What had I done? It emerged that they were a team from The Stragglers running club who are running from John O’Groats to Lands End to raise money for Macmillan (you can read more about them here and sponsor them here). An extra twenty serious proper runner types joining us? Excellent.

As I followed a less intimidating couple to the meeting point (all of the Stragglers bounded past, warming up effortlessly) I was struck with the horrible thought that I had forgotten how to run. I called myself an idiot and carried on trying to work out the mechanics of how the run worked, before giving up and asking a friendly marshall. The course is described as, “a 400m run along a bridleway to a 3 lap clock-wise loop (1400m per lap) consisting mainly of a gravel trail with a grassy downhill section towards the end of the loop. Runners then finish with the same 400m run down the bridleway back to the start/finish”.

What goes down, must go up

With hindsight, I realise that the downhill section would inevitably involve a corresponding uphill section and, given that we run three loops, there would in fact be three uphill sections. This, combined with me setting off far too fast, combined with the wind and rain, made for a more challenging run than I had expected. Later that afternoon (after several hours of clicking refresh on the results page) I discovered that I had finished in 29:53 – 50th out of 61 and second in my age group (on closer inspection, second could also acurately be defined as ‘last’ – clearly all the rest of the 30-34 year olds have better things to do on a rainy Saturday morning, they’re probably all hungover or raising children or something).

The thing is, I know I can go faster. I’ve gone faster in my training runs. I want to go back and do it again to prove that I can go faster. I suspect that this is one of the purposes of Parkrunning and I’ve fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

Here is the prerequisite photo of a duck