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.

Canal Adventure #13 – Haigh Hall to Wigan

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Where to begin? Since my last post, I have consulted a physio who diagnosed me with both top-down (lopsided pelvis) and bottom-up (over pronating feet) wonkiness resulting in an over-tight iliotibial band on my left side, which causes pain in my right knee. There was a far more technical explanation to all this, which I nodded and mmmmmmed through as if I understood every word (a bit like when a mechanic explains why you’re going to have to pay them a vast amount of money because of what’s wrong with your car). The explanation was technical, the solution was simple – a foam roller. I have been instructed to roll daily, more if I can do, in fact “if you can take three weeks leave and use that to roll, that would be perfect…”.

At the end of three weeks of rolling (next Thursday) I will return to Andy and, if I have better movement, I will be taught some exercises to correct things. The first time I used the roller there was an awful lot of yelping and swearing, my god it hurt. I spent two days looking for bruises (there were none), couldn’t carry my work bag on the left because it hurt too much when it touched and felt like someone had been clubbing my leg with a blunt instrument. However, the pain has now subsided and I can roll with minimal yelping and falling off.

My most important question during the consultation was “when can I run again?”. The best part of the consultation was the look on Andy’s face when I followed this up with the announcement that I was asking because I’m supposed to be doing a half marathon in September. He then asked me a question, which I replied with the answer, “no, September 2011….”. To be fair, he kept a straight face and then told me I’d be alright running as pain allows.

Luckily we’ve had a lot going on, so it was fairly easy to take a whole week off before returning with a three miler on Saturday (alright, set off a bit fast, uphill was uncomfortable but not painful), four miles on Tuesday (brilliant, felt wonderful) and two on Thursday (rubbish, couldn’t get into the swing of it).  The knee has been fine, the hip ok, but the head is annoying me. I’ve lost a bit of confidence in myself and have convinced myself that I can’t run any kind of distance, let alone 13 miles. In an attempt to resolve this, Ginge and I planned to do a stretch of canal running that we’ve been saving.We planned it for Sunday, but then postponed it (twice) and decided to celebrate my birthday with it (I was also taken out for tea, it wasn’t the only thing that we did. I’m not that sad).

We started at Haigh Hall, where the miniature train was running and lots of people seemed to be enjoying the summer holidays, and off we went to tackle the Wigan Flight.

The start and finish - Bridge 60

The Wigan Flight is a series of 21 locks that takes the canal a height of 214ft in less than 2 miles. If nothing else, it dispels the myth that canals are flat. We chose to run down the flight  (we’re not daft) and have a few breathers photo opportunities on the way back up.

Bridge 52 - the turn around

The route takes you past the end of the Leigh Branch canal (linking the Leeds-Liverpool to the Bridgewater canal).

Leigh Branch Canal

Gateway to the Cheshire Ring

The Leigh Branch is 14 miles long and takes you through Leigh town centre and Pennington Flash, annual home of the swimming part of Ironman UK and weekly home to the Pennington Park Run what I did a few weeks ago.

According to my fabulous new Pearson’s canal books (Ginge knows how to pick my birthday pressies well), the Flight takes around six hours to navigate in a boat. Each lock is fantastically complicated, has vandal-deterring locks and British Waterways encourage boats to pass through in pairs in order to save precious water. When we ran through, two BW staff were hard at work coordinating the ascent and descent of several beautiful boats, which we gawped at enviously.

Room for two

As we continued our own ascent, several people helpfully pointed out that it was easier going the other way, which was very kind of them. Reaching Top Lock did require quite a bit of determination (and a little bit of walking. For my knee…) and it was something of a relief to reach Lock 65 (or Lock I in old money), not least because we were both proper hungry by this time and I had presents to open.

Top of the Locks!

Miles run = 6.5
Canal miles completed = 3.25
Total canal miles = 75.35/127*
Bridges = 60-52

Messing about in boats

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“Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING – absolute nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,’ he went on dreamily: ‘messing – about – in – boats….’

Breakfast

So said Ratty to Mole in the Wind in the Willows, and that’s what we spent doing today. On Wednesday, me and Ginge will have been married for four years and what better way to celebrate than on the canal? The canal running was the inspiration for the trip (I’ve said  before, I’m not bloody obsessed) because without it, we never would have known about the Foulridge tunnel and we would never have spotted Tigerlily, the hire boat that we borrowed for the day. We ran this section as our first canal/camping adventure at the end of May; it was grey and miserable on the Saturday, and grey, miserable and wet on the Sunday. Luckily, we were blessed with better weather today.

Blue skies were very welcome

It was strange being on the other side of the fence for once, normally it’s me peering at people and saying hello as I plod past them, but today we were the object of people’s greetings and curiosity. It also made a change for there just to be two of us on a boat (we’ve been on narrowboats two years previously, but they’ve been more, ahem, party boats. On one trip, we ended up split into a girls’ boat and a boys boat, and I snuck onto the boys because I will not be defined by gender stereotypes. And the girls’ boat was like a scary floating hen do) and not incurring the wrath of canal dwellers as  a drunken ship of fools passes their moorings.

One mile of darkness...

...being dripped on by stalactites...

...but there was light at the end of the tunnel.

We navigated our way through the mile long tunnel, had a picnic in the sunshine, knitted, listened to Test Match Special, stopped for an ice cream, acquired two head injuries (I’d have to have some kind of helmet if we lived on a boat, I’m short but clumsy) and no one fell in.

Not a bad spot for a picnic

Dinner guests (I always imagine swans to be hollow, but have never tapped one to be sure)

I’ve also had three days knee rest and will be ringing a Twitter recommended physio tomorrow – thank you all for your wise words on my last post.

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.