Dealing with Uncertainty

It’s going to be a fairly short post from me for June. I have been juggling loads of things whilst trying to improve my running form, to get back to what it was before my Watford Half Marathon. Overall I think it has been pretty successful, with most of June being spent running a weekly mileage of around 30 miles and above. However this distance has not been without its niggles and with the quality running sessions I have added in; my right lower back and glute have  become quite tense over the last couple of weeks. Luckily I have had the advice of my fellow club members, as well the physio who I have been seeing for the last couple of months about my calf and my more recent issues.

So in a lot of ways things are looking positive with my running and I feel like I am heading in the right direction. That said I am still apprehensive, as I begin my marathon training. Ultimately the reason for feeling like this is the fear of becoming injured again, therefore having to miss another marathon this year; which to be honest would lead me to contemplating whether I should train for another marathon in 2017. Being injured is not a great feeling, but it does give you a marker as to what you can and can’t do in regards to training. Now that I am relatively okay and am free to start increasing my mileage, this is where the uncertainty comes in. How do I know when I have pushed myself too much? What sort of sessions take more out of me than others? These are questions that I can’t answer right now, but will only be able to know once I have begun my marathon training.

Running in Limbo

It has been a strange month or so since my last post. Things have been moving in a very positive direction for my running. In general my calf seems to be holding up well with a weekly mileage of between 20 – 29 miles, including tempo sessions and intervals. However I have felt that I haven’t had a real sense of structure to my running recently. This is mainly down to tearing my calf (back in February) and also having to sit out of the London marathon this year. Though it has also been about being patient and letting my calf heal, especially with the occasional twinges that seem to haunt my running at the moment. Indeed it has been pretty difficult to determine whether my calf has just been put through a tough run or whether I have exhausted the muscle. This feeling usually occurs after the end of my longest run (currently 10 miles) or after a hard session. 

The result of this inability to understand whether I have pushed my calf too much- either because of my past experience from pushing myself too hard during my marathon training  or that I am just experiencing phantom pains in my calf- has led me to feel in a sort of limbo. I am reluctant to enter the short, sharp and hard races that the summer running season brings. At the moment it feels like I am on the running equivalent of being on a desert island; you hope that you will be rescued soon, but you do not know when. I know that my calf is healing and that I am being able to do more with it, but I really don’t know when I can start pushing as hard as I did for London. Until you really push yourself beyond your current limits do you really ever know how far you can go? It is from this reasoning that I am going to run the North Downs Race on Sunday 26^th June. This race is over an undulating 18 mile course and should hopefully instil a sense of confidence when approaching my marathon training again. If this goes according to plan then I will try to enter the 5km and 10km Sri Chinmony London races in July. These speed races should then prepare me for my two half-marathons (in August and September), which combined with my overall marathon training should help me towards a personal best at Abingdon.

Parkrun and Public Spaces

The London Marathon has finished for another year, and for over 30 years hundreds and thousands of people have experienced what is arguably one of the world’s greatest marathons to race. Though how do you prepare for such an event as a marathon? People have come up with all sorts of plans and the latest training advice that makes a marathon easier to train for, but a cornerstone of any effective marathon plan will be running a certain number of miles per week. Inevitably this will lead to people running through parks, shared public spaces in cities, woodlands, areas of outstanding natural beauty, etc.  There’s no doubt that wherever people will be running, they will most likely be sharing that place with people who are not running. This leads to a question of what the purpose of public spaces are for: sport, fitness classes, relaxing, walking? There is no easy answer and anyone who goes to a park will be able to see the whole variety of different activities that I have just mentioned.

Just Keep Swimming

I’m nervous, the music is blaring, I’m sweating and trying to copy a series of dance moves; but I can’t do the moves and instead it looks like I have lost all co-ordination. I wished I could say I was incredibly drunk and I was trying to dance in some random nightclub, but I am actually in a ‘Total Body Conditioning’ class. It feels like whilst I perform my dance warm up moves- completely out of sync by the way- that the instructor and the rest of the  people in the class are staring at me in disbelief, but I am happy. I am able to exercise again with only a very slight feeling of pain in my calf, and for me that is a huge step in the right direction.

Long Road to Recovery

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth- Mike Tyson.

This quote pretty much sums up the situation I am currently in; I am injured and haven’t been able to run properly for the last three weeks. Tyson’s quote- for me sadly- is an appropriate follow up to my last post in January. Up until the second week of February I had been following my marathon plan perfectly. In fact January for me had been one personal best after another, culminating in a great run at the infamous Parliament Hill cross country run on 30^th January where I started to realise that I may have a certain aptitude for running in mud.  This was probably more to do with my rugby days than actual running ability, but who knows. The following week I felt pretty tender; not surprising really after completing the Parliament Hill course and the next day doing a 20 mile run. However I thought it was just the deep ache of marathon training starting to kick-in and anyway I had the Watford Half Marathon to prepare for. So I told myself all I had to do was get to Thursday night and then I could rest for a few days before tackling Watford on 7^th February; but as the week progressed a niggle in my right calf wouldn’t  go away. I pushed on though and felt slightly apprehensive about Watford.

New Year, New You…or just another fad

Me at a Cross Country Race

I have been taking a long time to think about what I want from 2016. January always seems to be a strange month; a mixture of everyone full of good intentions, trying to get through the hangover of Christmas and waiting for the first paycheque of the year to tide them over from an expensive December. It may be a cynical way to look at the year, but it’s not helped by the range of diet books promising to help you become a new improved version of yourself. I’m not disputing whether these diet books help or not, I’m not qualified to make that decision, but I always find it fascinating that these books are launched at this time of year. It seems we go through a ritual each year of saying that we are going to finally change all our bad habits and become a new person.

National 3 Peaks Challenge

With 2015 drawing to a close I am noting some of my other achievements besides marathon training. One of these happens to be the National 3 Peaks Challenge (N3P), which I did on Friday 21^st August to Saturday 22^nd August this year. What makes the N3P so exciting and daunting at the same time is that it manages to combine sleep deprivation, a real endurance challenge for any type of person, extraordinarily beautiful scenery and driving across Britain like a madman all in the space of under 24 hours. This blog is about my experience of the N3P and what my tips would be to people attempting it.

On our way to Fort William to scale Ben Nevis