Juggling Running and Life

I haven’t posted on my blog for what feels like an eternity. It has certainly made me realise how much I enjoy writing about running and where I want to take this blog. I have been coming up with some ideas about I could develop Running to Some Uncertain Purpose, but all of these will take time and some patience in how I fit all my ideas into one coherent shape. It seems to be the trickiest part of running, is having the patience to keep at something when it begins to create friction alongside other parts of your life. That has been the main reason for my lack of presence on this blog- something had to give. A number of work issues popped up in quick succession and I was left with a choice; keep running and don’t blog about it or blog about running but don’t engage in a sport that keeps you physically and mentally fit. My choice was the former, but at that time loads of things seemed to be happening with my personal running journey as well as within the running world. 

 In the world of running it would definitely have to be the allegations of Alberto Salazar participating in doping and also inhabiting the ‘grey area’ of what is and isn’t legal in performance enhancement for his athletes. From a UK perspective these allegations seem to have a global reach, as once again it brings up the spectre of doping in elite running. Paula Radcliffe has been outspoken in her criticism of doping in marathon running and it was only at the beginning of this year that Kenya’s Rita Jeptoo was found to have been doping. There have also been rumours of doping within ultra-running as well. Also by Salazar being accused of doping it has potential implications for his two star athletes: Galen Rup and Mo Farah. From conversations with other runners about this I have found there to be a variety of views about what the allegations of Salazar mean. For some it just shows that at the very highest levels of competitive running personal rivalries can lead to bitter recriminations that eventually spill out into the media, others think it is the BBC and ProPublica trying to smear one of the world’s best marathon runners, many people are worried about the damage it will do to the sport that is not as well funded or widely watched as say football and a few just want to find out the truth. I would put myself in the last two categories. Hopefully this will not be running’s version of the Lance Armstrong scandal. Whatever is going on I think that there should be consideration about how these allegations are handled (including the people who are facing the allegations), that if anything untoward has happened then this needs to be shared in a transparent manner and that we should try to remember the many positive things running brings to people all over the world. My own view is that when there is too much money at stake in terms of sponsorship, media coverage, etc. It can lead to people going too far in the pursuit of winning. Hopefully whatever happens, this issue can be resolved sooner rather than later.

On a personal level with running, besides not having time to blog, I tried to start up my training again and found my knees becoming incredibly stiff as well as quite painful. I eventually found out that what I had was runner’s knee. Needless to say this was not what I wanted to have after taking a break since running the Brighton Marathon. I tried to heed my own advice about coping with injuries that I written about previously, but this did not make things any easier.  Eventually I had to accept that I could not run for a week at the very least to give my body time to heal. This combined with exercises, like the clam and the bridge, helped my leg to get better. At the moment I am doing leg strengthening exercises, such as the weighted squat and the leg extension, to make sure I build up the muscles around the knee. I am also doing foam rolling, stretching and yoga to loosen up my legs. For a while I did feel quite down and it nearly got to the point where I started to worry about pushing my body in a similar way to when I was preparing for Brighton. Luckily I think I have gotten over the worst of it, but it put things back into perspective for me. After narrowly missing out on getting a time under of three hours for the marathon, I think I had become slightly obsessed with focussing on times rather than just enjoying going out for a run. Now I have a better appreciation of running as well as cross-training to help give my knees a rest. I still want to get better times, but I want to be able to take my body with me in one piece when I cross the finish line. I think this short video below really shows what it is like to become injured and not be able to run for a while or not at all in some cases.

People who Run who can't Run from Whalebone Films on Vimeo.

Luckily I managed to get over my runner’s knee before taking part in a series of runs/ races in June. The first was the Yorkshire Three Peaks, then I did my first 5k track race and I have just completed the North Downs 2015 race. So far my body seems to be okay and in some ways getting stronger. I will do a separate post about these a bit later, most likely now in July. Hopefully I will be able to update my blog more regularly now.