From Golden Gate Park to Royal Parks Half

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It’s about this time of year that I like to write a post entitled “how not to prepare for a half marathon”. Last year, September’s Folkestone Half was preceded by a tight, grouchy ITB (and accompanying knee pain) which affected my training in July and August. This year, I have adopted an approach that I am calling “reverse tapering”.

How not to prepare for a half marathon 2012

Twang your back sitting on a sofa – this really doesn’t help the preparations in any way, shape or form.

Go on holiday to the other side of the world
Two weeks ago, we flew out to San Francisco. In itself this is a really, really good thing to do and I heartily recommend it, just not three weeks before race day.

That my friends is a blue sky and sunshine. Every day was like that. We returned home to flood warnings.

San Francisco is rubbish for greedy people. Alright, it’s actually brilliant for greedy people – I am a greedy person and I didn’t meet a meal that I didn’t like while we were away. Despite my concerns that I may have turned into what the cabin crew politely referred to as “one of our broader passengers”, I was relieved to not have to ask for a wider seat on the plane.

Breakfast. Sour dough French toast. Accompanied by me exclaiming excitedly “It’s basically pudding. Pudding for breakfast. It says breakfast on the menu, but it’s pudding”.

Having been lured in by thoughts of running through the Golden Gate Park and along the Embarcadero or joining a running tour, I did take my trainers with me. They seemed to enjoy the trip, but sadly they didn’t get to see any of the city, apparently preferring to remain in my suitcase for the whole week. Ooops. However, we did do lots and lots of walking and if San Francisco has one thing, it’s hills.

Lombard Street – zig zag zig zag

And steps. Two things, hills and steps.

This wasn’t the bottom of the steps to Coit Tower. I have another 3 photos of the steps that preceded this stage.

This seemed to offset most of the lard and hopefully did something towards me not losing the fitness that I had acquired previously (albeit a little erratically). Unfortunately, this positive was neuralised by the fact that the flight home/time difference threw out my normally clockwork sleep system meaning that I couldn’t sleep until the early hours and started dozing off at four in the afternoon. Which is a shame because I don’t finish work until five.

Oh and within 24 hours of landing back at Manchester, I had managed to twang my back again. This time getting up from a sofa – if nothing else, I shall be avoiding DFS in the near future. So that was another week of ice, ibuprofen and painful massage using a bouncy ball (don’t ask), but no running.

Finally, with just seven days until the start line I have hauled myself out for a not brilliant 10 miler (I was completed under-fuelled, so I have been carb-loading ever since. Mostly on Tunnocks caramel wafers admittedly, but the thought is there) and did a giddy 3 tonight just to remind my legs that they do know how to run.

2 days, 12 hours to go. Gulp.

Runners may not give a hoot about this post

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This is one of my purely knitting posts.

She doesn’t know it, but I owe a  debt of gratitude to the lovely Hels for bringing on my knitting skills over the past month. It started when she asked me to knit two garish hats for some newly arrived twins. Although I’ve knitted in the round using double pointed needles and I’ve knitted straight using circular needles, I’d never actually knitted in the round on circular needles (which seems silly now I think about it). To knit the teeny tiny hats (from this pattern), I mastered the ways of the magic loop method. Whilst I did like using DPNs, it’s a little bit like wrestling with an angry hedgehog at times and I suspect that this is one of the reasons that my ongoing sock project has remained ongoing for nearly three years now.

I have discovered that one of the downsides of having big feet is that the foot of the sock takes even longer to knit

Armed with the skills of the magic loop, I announced my intention to knit a Kindle cosy. Now, it might be a hangover from the time I served with the Brownies, but I do like an owl and owls seemed appropriately bookish for this project. Searching Ravelry for a bit of guidance, I ended up going for an amalgamation of this cabled Kindle sleeve and this owl coffee cosy. However, to do this I needed some more new knitting skills – how to do a magic cast on to join the ends of the sleeve and how to cable without using a cable needle (I can barely cable using a cable needle…).

Cabled reverse, no owls. The cosy is nice and stretchy, the flap needed a little bit of blocking to get the correct shape

 

So not only do I have an owlish cosy for my Kindle, but I also have a little stash of new knitting skills to add to my bag.

Completed cover with owl

Oh, and having learned to love magic loop, I went to my nearby lovely wool shop to get some 2.5mm needles only to find that they were out of the long length that I would need. The end result of this is that the owner showed me yet another technique that I had never understood in the past – how to knit in the round using two short circular needles. I did suspect that this may be a ruse to sell me twice as many needles, but it’s so easy that I have actually finished my sock!

One done, one cast on.

I aim to have finished the pair before 2015.

Let me be a lesson to you

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Currently I am a cautionary tale. I have only managed two three mile runs since Thursday because I have been injured. I have in fact been injured by a settee. I wish I could say that it was an Acme sofa that fell from the sky with a whoosh and a sproingy clang, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t even moving furniture in a PG Tips monkey/Chuckle Brothers/Bernard Cribbins stylee. I was sitting.

I injured my back by sitting on a very comfy sofa. I spend a lot of time sitting – my working day alternates between sitting at my desk, in my car and in people’s front rooms – and normally I’m very good at it. Unfortunately on Wednesday, I was sitting and twisting so that I could talk to someone and it was just enough to leave me feeling slightly achy at the end of the day. The next day I started running with the intention of doing 6 miles, but quickly downgraded to 3 because of the niggling pain (even though it was feeling a bit better after a mile or so). It was fine for the rest of the day but at two in the morning it woke me up. I couldn’t settle. Every time I changed position I was rewarded with a few minutes of comfort and a false dawn of hope before the pain started again. By Friday I was a one woman Ministry of Silly Walks. Following the advice of my on-call physio (hello mum) I liberally applied ice packs and scoffed ibuprofen like they were Smarties (actually I took the stated dose) and didn’t run until Sunday when I managed another relatively pain-free three miles.

The moral of this story is look after your back all of the time – even when you’re not doing anything in particular. I’ve sat through any number of moving and handling training sessions and follow all of the rules when I’m moving something hefty, but it’s when you least expect it that injuries happen. When I was a student I went on an induction where we were encouraged to share back injury stories – I couldn’t tell you any of the work-related stories, but I’ll always remember the doctor who did his back in getting a piece of cheese out of the fridge. Sadly none of us dared ask what was he a man or a mouse.

This is what the NHS Choices website has to say about backs – lots of advice about avoiding injuries, exercises, yoga, posture and all sorts of gubbins.

Hello Dave, you are my wife now…

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I have been too busy getting on with (and enjoying) a week’s worth of exercise to actually write about it, so here goes with a quick recap. After a splendid weekend in London (where our food diary went something like; Mr Tickle jelly sweets, beer, piggy barmcake, beer, kangaroo burger, beer, beer, noodles, beer, noodles, beer, falafel, beer, pizza, beer, jaffa cakes) both Ginge and I felt that it was time for a week of temple food and committed exercise. I have been forced back into the gym to rediscover the fact that I quite like doing weights and I have discovered that necessity can be the mother of chilled out running…

Tuesday
I had planned to do a longish interval session, but couldn’t decide on what intervals to run. Because of my indecision, I ended up extending each running session by a minute and it turned into a longish pyramid interval session instead. Well it did for the first half… After a couple of miles or so I started to feel some lower abdominal pains, which never bodes well. Without going into too much detail, if this starts after a mile or so it’s usually a sign that I need to stop running away from home, turn round and make sure that I’m within dashing distance of a familiar loo. However, while I’ve been doing intervals and trying to pick up my speed, I’ve noticed that I get very similar pain when I start to run faster (I’m convinced it’s a combination of how I breathe and tense my upper body). The fun part is trying to tell which sort of pain it is.

I weighed up the fact that I was doing intervals against the fact that the weekend’s excesses had left my insides a bit confused and decided not to risk it. I turned round, abandoned the intervals and gently headed back. The pains didn’t stop. In fact they got worse. I walked for a bit. They got even worse. I had a growing sense of dread that I wasn’t going to make it home. I pulled up outside the slightly dodgy looking motel that I’ve gone past hundreds of times but never been in – they might have toilets near reception, I could just nip in couldn’t I? Deep breath, in I went – no loos. No signs of life. I followed the instructions for locating staff until I reached a door marked ‘Private’. Another deep breath. I tapped tentatively… Sounding like Hugh Grant* (“Um, excuse me, this is um very embarrassing, but I’m out running and ah, could I um, use your loo…?”) but feeling like Papa Lazarou (“Hello Dave, can I use your toilet Dave? Dave, there is a blockage in your toilet…” **). Luckily the lady was very nice, directed me to where I needed to be, I did what I needed to do and yelping “thank you very much” as I scuttled past the door marked ‘Private’.

The rest of the run was uneventful.

Wednesday
I went to the gym. I like the gym. They have proper facilities there.

Thursday
I fell asleep and declared it a rest day.

Friday
I took advantage of a late start at work to do an early but not too early 6 miles. The run itself was uneventful apart from the fact that it felt good, I enjoyed it and I managed to ignore the nagging voice of doubt that crept in after a couple of miles. Oh, and I ran without tunes. Normally I would have my shuffle on for anything more than three miles, but I couldn’t find my earphones and I was feeling reckless so off I went with only my thoughts for company. It turns out my thoughts are mostly weird and a large chunk of the run was taken up with thinking about advanced directives and what decisions I would want making if anything happened to me and I lost capacity. Cheerful. It did occur to me that it would be ironic if this was the run, without tunes and whilst thinking about such things, that I would get run over by a bus. Thankfully I wasn’t. I did see some swans though.

Saturday
Another self-declared rest day. I knitted.

Sunday
Long run day. I wasn’t sure if I was looking forward to this. On the one hand, I’d had some good runs during the week and was enjoying myself; on the other hand, what if I couldn’t do it? For once I’d put some thought into making sure that I was well prepared – a good carb-loaded tea the night before, only a small glass of wine, water before bed and when I got up, oats eaten an hour before setting off, water bottle filled. I had no route planned, other than turning right at the front door, left at the end of the road and then running 10 miles. After about half a mile, I realised that I had left my carefully filled water bottle on the kitchen table. Arse. I tried not to panic or give up and plodded on. This decided my route for me – rather than go a way that I find difficult at the best of times and has no escape routes, I went for a loop that could be 6.5 miles or it could be extended as much as I want. I plodded on, ignoring the dark grey clouds gathering to my left and listening to clever Radio 4 people talking amusingly about intellectually challenging things. Just over halfway, the heavens opened – I plodded on, actually quite grateful to be hydrating one way or another. At 6.5 miles, I plodded on with my extension loop, pausing at 8 miles to consider my route, before turning round and heading home, cold, wet and very pleased with myself.

The lesson of this story is that I seem to have an awful lot of comfort blankets in the form of routines when I run, some of them might be useful, but as long as I have me and my trainers I’m mostly ok.

And I hesitate to say this, but I think that I might have got my running mojo back!

*But not looking like him, unless he’s become a sweaty, red-raced blonde

**I hope that all of you familiar with the League of Gentleman are doing the voice. If you didn’t, go back and do the voice. Go on. You know you should.

Shiny new gadgetry in the sunshine

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Having spent my last week of Juneathon blogging from a tent using an iPhone that hovered on the edge of battery life from about 4 o’clock on the day we arrived, I could have done with having some kind of mobile charging device. Unfortunately, I didn’t have one then. However, it appears that mobile charging devices are a bit like buses and, all of a sudden, two have come along at once.

The nice people at Mobile Solar Chargers sent me two styles to try. Both of them can be charged by mains, solar and USB or can trickle charge (I’m learning the technical terms as I go along) your electrical gubbins purely from the sun.

My plan for testing these was to give them a full charge and discharge three times for the sake of the battery and then take one to work to test it on one of my staying late days. Unfortunately my natural level of disorganisation let me down. The first time I tried, I remembered my phone and the charger, but not the right adapter. The second time I tried, I remembered my charger and the right adapter, but forgot my actual phone (it was awful, I felt lost). Anyway, what followed was a much more haphazard approach to my trials.

The Lite mobile charger has a nifty light on a stalk and an LED indicator on the back to show how much charge it has. I tried to charge this on the window sill but after a full day, I couldn’t get it past 80% so I gave up and charged it with the plug. Since then, I haven’t really tried out the charging technology, but the light on a stalk has proved to be bloody brilliant for reading my Kindle in bed.

Lite charger – with nifty light on a stalk

The second charger is the Pocket mobile charger. This doesn’t have a light on a stalk but instinctively I prefer the look and feel of it. This is purely a shallow judgement because it looks sleeker and swishier than its Lite counterpart (which seems a bit boxy and clunky in comparison).

The swishy Pocket mobile charger

Again, I haven’t had the organisational skills to try it out using its stored charge, but did carry out the following selfless scientific research. If you want to replicate the experiment you will need:

  • A sunny Thursday (preferably a birthday)
  • A beer garden
  • Some lovely beer (to be truly accurate reconstruction, this should be a pint of Lancaster Straw)
  • Splendid company
  • An iPhone and a solar charger

First of all, fritter away a good amount of battery power by messing around on twitter and the internet.

Do not judge the prioritising of my apps. Just look at the lovely sheep.

Next, locate a suitable beer garden, purchase a pint of lovely beer and take up residence in the sunshine. Bask for a moment in the joy of being in a beer garden on a Thursday afternoon.
Whilst basking (there’s no point stopping just for the sake of science) plug charger into phone and wait.

After an hour or so, marvel that your phone is fully charged.

Oooh look! Charged! I had a very nice slow cooked pulled beef sandwich while this was doing its thing.

This bodes very well for future camping trips.

Oh, and another thing that I have been very impressed with is the sturdiness of the various adapters – I’ve had another charger in the past and that ended up with me having to use a pair of tweezers to remove half a mini-USB lead from some gadget or another.

Both the Lite (£24.95) and Pocket (£19.95) chargers are available from Mobile Solar Chargers (and I do intend to carry on with my haphazard experiments).