Where I am - re-starting from a low baseline, and pulling out of events

 It it safe to say that I have been here before and no the way, but also that I know how long the journey is and how tough it will be to get to where I want to go. Two recent runs with the Pegasus Running club crew have shown me what I already knew in my heart about my current fitness level, and a recent trip to the GP surgery reminded me just how low I had let my fitness ebb. Recognising the problem is they say half the battle and I very definitely know that I have a battle ahead.

How bad is my fitness? Well lets just say that I am where I was before I started this blog, and am like then learning to run again. I have no dramatic injury, it is simply that I am simply unfit. I weigh too much for my physiology, and my body is labouring with exertion just now.

So, Brighton Marathon 2021 is a "no" from me unfortunately. This is a race that I really want to do but it will have to wait one more year, a year where I have a lot of work to do on myself (I am though happily signed up for next years race and will all being well have that option). For the time being I hope to ease back into running events with local series' and races.

The reason that I am pulling out of races and at a very low fitness ebb is multifactorial - so much so that it could really fall into the category of "well life got in the way" - between the pandemic, working from home, job insecurities, major family member ill health, other family issues, poor choices around food, and lack of recognition of my own health needs there is little wonder I am where I am.

As I said I know the road I want to travel and so lets go!

Happy busy new year - where did January go?

It has been one of those starts to the year where you blink and wonder where all of the days have gone. I have been busy with lots of different things, but the main commitment that I have been trying to keep is moving every day to cover at least 5km. This was something that I started in mid-December when work finished for the year and I had the headroom and time to instigate some new habits with the intention of trying to make them stick through the festive period.

So how is it going? Pretty well... I have just finished @REDJanuary2021 where I moved myself everyday over 5km, 29 walks and 2 runs. I wold have liked to have run more but I listened to my body and allowed myself not to rush into arbitrary run every other day schedules that would have probably not worked for me just now. Wow, that sounds contrary I know but my body just isn't in a state where I could have run to that kind of schedule or volume (even a starters couch-to-5k volume).

In the end January was about watching what I ate and getting into the habit of being more active again... 10lbs (4.5kg) down over the month is testament to that working pretty well. There is a long way to go but it is a start, the goal is a long way down the road and I have the time to try and do this really well.

All in January was not too shabby at all, here's to a 2021 that turns out to ultimately be better than 2020 was.

A bit of a flavour of my month from my Strava feed:

RED day 31 - It is always a good run when you run into people you hadn’t planned to, and after a brief chat with Rhys it was onwards to another brief distanced chat with Julia and Ali (Pegs assemble!). The snow got heavier throughout the run, which was a bit... well, lovely actually. Granted the second half of the run I was running with the snow at my back which was much more pleasant than the opposite! The run had a bit of everything which was fabulous, and I even managed to resist the urge to go faster - always a bonus on only you second run in months.

#redjanuary2021 is done and I covered at least 5km every day - 29 days of walking with two runs thrown in. January was about changing habits and laying the groundwork ready for the foundations to be laid for a future marathon. January is not the end of that process but part of the beginning that started in December, going to try and keep the progress going at its own pace and we’ll see how much building happens along the way. This is a marathon not a sprint afterall.

The one with the pushed pace #RED2021day18 - There were moments on this walk where I could have comfortably broken into a run, yes I was doing that funny kind of walking where it looks like the teacher just told you not to run in the corridor. I have the sense that a run isn't too far away now, but I know that this particular run was powered by stress release and a 5km run would not have ended well.

Another day another RED 5km walk.... done.

The one in foul weather dodging fallen (Christmas) trees #RED2021day11 - Not a pleasant walk with the wind, cold, rain and all the now unwanted tree house guests left out on the street to fend for themselves. Couldn't walk this morning so it was a late one, which with the weather deteriorating all day was a bit of a kicker but it was what it was. 5km again on a regular route with a grumpy greyhound for company.

Running slow... really slow

I have run a lot and I have hurt a lot this year, I started the year with some monumental ideas and a training plan that took an age to craft but then I got injured. And so goes the story for so many runners, and moreover so goes the story for me on a pretty regular basis (you won't have to click too far back in this blog for proof of that).

So 2016 sucked, it sucked real bad! No, I am not about to launch into how many idols died, or start on about geo-political shifts... it was for me at a fundamental level awful. I now weigh more than I have in years, so much so that my body is hurting from the burden, and any life / work / activity balance has gone up in smoke. Hence a New Year uber-plan that went so spectacularly wrong, and looking at it in the cool light of reflection I know exactly why - I did not go slow, so now I have to go really slow.

I started out on the plan as if I had been running decent miles already (which I hadn't), it presumed fitness would return overnight (which it didn't), it assumed that I would see issues coming and fix them before any damage was done (which I didn't). Seeing as I have read so many running books and magazines which explain frequently about returning to running, the importance of incremental adaptation, the crucial need to take accurate stock of where you are in life before you start a running program of any kind, you'd think I might have avoided this phenomenon? No!

Looking at my 'running' now I have to slow done, so much so, in fact I have to... walk. I am trying to steadily increase my very basic fitness, upping my day to day walking, stairs climbed, and better food volume choices. Happily I am enjoying walking and have taken several 'power' walks in the last week or so. The other part of this approach is not running fast, I have now completed two parkruns staying deliberately within zone 2 aerobic heart rate, reasoning that if I run fast this heavy I it won't be a case of if I get injured but when.

All of this means that this years late spring marathon will now be a stepping stone to 2018, when I hope to be firmly back on track with running and a whole lot of other things.

3 runs in 5 days!

You might well wonder what is going on when I report that I have run 3 times in the last five days given my recent terrible posts of fitness woes. Well firstly it wasn't planned, secondly they weren't very long, and thirdly they hardly mark a complete 'return to form'. Of course I am very happy to reflect on three runs and look to build from here. In fact there are now 13 weeks until my autumn 'target' race and so I have 3 weeks until I have a crack at a 10 week Strava training plan. I have my fingers crossed as the last three runs have demonstrated some areas of weakness...

• lack of strength - stride length / running action is awful - my calves have been complaining a lot
• I am way way way too heavy - well, yes, we knew this a few weeks back
• I can't run in my 'old' shoes (they cause almost instance knee pain) and I can't complete the distance in my 'new' lighter shoes (they don't support me as fatigue sets in) - gait analysis and another set of shoes is required
• there will be a need to actually follow advice and follow the plan properly for a change and not think I know better
• realistic goal setting will be critical to my enjoyment not only of the training but of the event itself
• regular parkrun events with my kids will be useful in making sure I don't do too much tempo work (I have a habit of attacking parkrun like a race and wrecking myself for the rest of the training week)

... I will do my best to let you know how this all goes!

Another round the park run

I got myself out for a run last night even though it felt like I had so many other things to do that I shouldn't. It was a very necessary run as I have spent the entire week reflecting on the fact that I the most out of 'shape' I have been in years*. If I had not run the pattern of avoiding the problem might just have carried on festering. Much though I wanted to go out and run fast, hard and angry to tackle the stress with a physical blow out I managed to reign myself in and run with slow measured control - so I wouldn't spend the next few days a broken mess unable to train again (suffering heavy DOMS, sore feet, sore tendons and so on).

The run itself was short, 4.6 km, and in the end pretty sweet. My head was all over the place attention wise but weirdly my body found a good groove in spite of myself. The weather was cooler, as we've been having some over due rain (yep, even in Wales rain can be overdue!), so it was really comfortable to run in. Running was kept to the path, and not the grass, thanks to the fact the uppers on my trainers are a loose weave teabag fabric that says "hey water come on in lets party!!". Fears that my feet would not thank me for running on the hard stuff were unfounded (or at least have been so far - I can walk this morning).

Sticking to MAF-like (see my post from earlier in the week) pace is definitely the way forwards until I can crack my recent unfit habits. It is ultimately fabulous to finish a run session and feel like your body could easily go again - even if time pressures might not let you. This morning, for example, there is a small chance I might even get out for a run again :-)

Ps. seems I am once again chasing the title of "best blogpost title of the year" - I will let you know how I get on in the voting!?!?

* my trousers are too tight, my t-shirts and shirts are 'fitting' in ways that leave me very self-conscious, my waist is doing its very very best impression of middle-aged spread, the stairs in work are not a comfortable climb, my body fat percentage is a number heading in the wrong direction - reasons to find the time to run I think most would agree.

Target180 weekly sum-up: a week of good progress

So I went and declared much of my intention in my last post around turning my fitness around in roughly six months, and now I am going about working on some of the key elements.

So this week just gone I have been busy racking up as much walking as I could without taking time out of other things. Walking into work one day, taking my lunch out to the park and walking a couple of laps, not taking the lift using the stairs, walking to a meeting across town rather than ordering a taxi - all of which have felt great and haven't left me overly tired.

The bullet-point for the week summary runs something like :-

• everyday this week I crashed through the 10,000 steps mark, topping out at 20,868 one day.
• ran on Tuesday (5km) and Thursday (8.3km)
• ran at a better pace than I have in months in both run sessions
• dropped another 1.5lb of body mass
• my trousers are definitively looser and my back is feeling much better
• generally noting that my face looks less puffy and bloated - even got a complement from Mrs.H. that I was looking better (!! heheh)
• made some great choices around food without feeling that I was depriving myself

So basically without following any of the many many regimes listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diets (really there is such a page and such a list), I have eaten sensibly without changing the nature of the food, and moved more. Holy-moly I think I may have hit upon a genius new diet fad system... ah no, wait... "eat less, move more" I've definitely heard that somewhere before.

Fabulous dinner earlier this week - Honey mustard chicken thighs with spinach and peas (something from a BBC Good Food recipe I think)

The next measure of 'progress', or moreover my current fitness, is the Milton Keynes half marathon on Monday. I am really looking forward to it even though my race pack was lost in the post and I have to go to the trouble of queueing for a replacement on the morning of the race (the race pack and number arrived at the eleventh hour, so I'm all kitted up and ready to go). I have a huge soft spot for the town, and the event as it where I ran my first ever marathon four years ago (time flies). We are travelling as a posse and if the weather plays ball a good time will be had by all - I don't mind rain while I run, the family stood watching tend to have a much clearer preference for the dry.

Just have to remember Monday is a half-marathon and not one of these :-)

Pacing wise I have to be careful not to let my head lead the way, and listen to my body instead. The 'plan' is to go out close to my average pace for the Cardiff Half, where I blew up in the last quarter of the course, and take this run more conservatively. The people around the course in Milton Keynes are usually fantastic so I hope to enjoy the atmosphere and enjoy the process of running a half marathon with no pressure or anxiety.

Have a good running weekend and I hope your projects and targets are going well.

Target180 - my new personal challenge

Having turned over most of the bad habits of the last few months and reset myself pretty well I started to look at goals / challenges. I wanted something to hang my efforts, on a little phrase (a mantra if you like those sorts of things), a short memory aid, something to keep in mind during a long run or tough session. I mulled over all sorts of stuff numbers came up quite a lot, goal times, numbers of events run, that sort of thing.

Eventually, I settled on 180 - the 'logic' being I should be able to turn around my running form in about 6 months (a sensibly long time I reasoned), and at the end get a personal best in some event or distance or another. Probably targeting the autumn Cardiff Half marathon, though not definitively as I'm leaving it open so that the chosen event doesn't consume all of my thinking - I want this to be about process and all around signs of improvement. So, 6 months is sort of 180 days taking 30 days in a month... then the number resonated and caught my imagination - 180 degrees, an about turn, a complete change of direction. An about face on the slide in fitness, activity, and body weight since the New Year.

So to set some benchmarks and give a feeling of the scale of this process and progress towards my Target180...

• I just ran my slowest half-marathon, 2:13:44 (Cardiff World Championships half-marathon, 26th March)
• This weekend just gone I ran my third slowest timed 5K, 28.08 (Cardiff parkrun, 23rd April)
• I was at my heaviest in over 5 years, at 15st 9lbs (99.3kg), on the 13th of April

The early signs are good, I've dropped 8lbs, my trousers which were getting uncomfortably tight are fitting better, my running feels less of an effort than it has for weeks, and I am generally finding lots of small ways to increase my movement. Motivation at the moment is very high and a little like the early progress needs some careful looking after. In fact the biggest challenge in any journey like this is to manage your expectations and cultivate your patience. It is far to easy to rush at the target and forget that there is a timeframe. Despite immediate look of all those before and after pictures that flood the health and wellness social media (and mainstream media) there are always large gaps in time hidden between the two photo - unless they are faked of course, as many reportedly are.

My Target180 is a journey and it has started, it didn't have a hard start date and won't have a hard finish date, after roughly 6 months the aim is to have made that turnaround and be travelling towards better fitness.

Tired of starting over - trying to refind the joy

The thought of starting over again is filling me with a sense of foreboding... I am a very long way from where I was and from where I would like to be. Happily I have started planning and have begun making some decisions. There are for example 24 weeks until the autumn (standard) version of the Cardiff Half marathon where I can run the same course that I just set my personal worst on, and see how far I can put that right.

First things first - nutrition! At the moment I am eating extremely badly, worse than I have for a long long time. I have on several occasions found myself (and it does feel like I found myself because it is so 'mindless') binge eating. At the moment I am lacking what some like to call 'balance' in my approach to food. Truth be told I am just not enjoying my food at all at the moment, it feels like a chore or something I should just grab between doing other things. So I tried to restore a bit of mindfulness to proceedings by picking up the food tracker app... that didn't last very long as it seemed to add to the feeling of food as a process not as a joy.

So apart from trying to rekindle some run training over the next couple of weeks I have a bit of a battle on my hands to readdress these bad habits that have grown up like pernicious weeds around my eating. I am going to try and make things as simple as I can and give myself as much opportunity as possible to sit with my food and enjoy it - eating mindfully and not mindlessly - and find some form of balance to stem my insistent and steady weight gain.

Wading through treacle

At the moment I just have the deep seated feeling of being stuck, wading through heavy treacle, this is more than just losing my running mojo. I am at the heavy end of my weight yo-yo and threatening even to top that. When I get into exercise I am fine but I am struggling with eating it is just too convenient and to quick to shove in my mouth. I am comfort eating at the moment, with all that has gone on this year I seem to have lost my resistance and sense of food proportion. It is not as if I haven't tried to get things back on track I have but no old tactic seems to work for more than a day or two. At the moment I am drowning in the 'shoulds', and can't seem to shake even one of them.

Targets? I have them in abundance just don't ask me to do anything about them at the moment - I'd just as soon carry on soaking in the self-pity. What is so bad that I am enjoying a pity party? That is just it I can't say for sure as it is a mix of small and big stuff that seems to have formed a formidably large dam. Probably the biggest thing is the lack of any routine as just at the moment I seem to be in permanent response mode.

Worst of it all is that I know that I have all the answers and know where I can find all the tools I need. I just can't quite reach out grab them and get on with this. We have a long weekend coming up so all I can do is try and gather some energy during that to get to fixing some of the small stuff to get my feet out of the treacle.

Hope things are going well where you are.

Ten year anniversary - on the move, or not?

Looking back at my blog it would be very easy to be confused as it pro-ports to be about movement and being on the move and so progress, whilst it is clear I haven't really made so very much. I am not, for example, now running sub-4hr marathons, or buzzing a near London marathon good for age PB.  There are cataloged here a number of failed rounds of trying to get 'fit' and pretty much failing at every attempt.

Reflecting on this apparent lack of progress there would appear to be a number of psychological conclusions that could be drawn - for example, sharing a goal taking the place of achieving it, as mentally I have perhaps felt rewarded simply for the process of typing a few posts and putting them 'out there'. Whatever truly is behind it is of course more tricky to define, as most often halts to progress stem from life, or work, or luck, or some such. What is true to say looking at this series of boom and bust endeavours is that the cycles are too short and too sharp, moreover they have settled into swinging around a constant average. Not an average happily that is moving in the wrong direction of unhealthy weight gain (or any other negative indicator), but it certainly isn't moving in the 'right' direction either.

It is fair enough that at the moment most of my times over most distances are still what they were 10 years ago in the face of an ageing chassis (in of itself I suppose a decent outcome of sorts). There is that feeling in me that somewhere the opportunity to run better times was wasted by bad habits and / or poor goal choice.

Am I lamenting and wallowing in self-pity? Well absolutely "yes", but in that lament some truths have become very very clear. The chief amongst these laments being the lack of consistency - the constant cycle swings of flirting with improvement and flirting with my old grossly overweight self. It is perhaps consistency that most people struggle with, we would surely all love to make progress in smooth linear progressions towards fitness goals.

How I made better use of a calorie tracker app

The run up to my marathons this autumn has had many ups and downs, and I thought I would share one of my better 'discoveries'. I have been using a calorie tracker app MyFitnessPal for a long time now (I first blogged about it in 2011 - "Calorie counting no really") - it is as far as I know one of the most popular. Every now and then I find more people I know are using it.

You might be wondering... "So what? People use it to keep their calorie intake in check?" Yes, of course this is its primary function, and one that I have made much use of in the last few years. I have set it up to loss weight slower or faster (once even to maintain weight) and I discovered that if I set it to lose relatively steeply that over the course of several weeks I got increasingly tired, with feelings of zero energy. Granted this could have been any number of things, but what I discovered lately is the most likely cause - hidden activity!

What is it that I am labelling hidden activity? Well the tracker does a great job of logging your training, your food intake, your body metrics, and your baseline activity levels. It is in the last one that I found I had issues. The baseline activity asks for your job type / daily activity levels. Upon discovering that my smartphone was tracking my steps (yup, some phones have pedometers in them that you would struggle greatly to switch off apparently - some suggested you can't turn them off!), reasoning if it was there I might as use it I linked this pedometer to the myfitnesspal app.

Bingo! I now have a day to day gauge of how active I have been and thus a better feel of my calorie 'needs' - some days I have had to pack a bit of extra food down so that I am not in crazy sized deficits. What was happening before the tracker was that when I started a training plan I would also start walking to work when I could, taking the stairs, walking the dog a bit further each day, etc. and making no allowance for it over and above the baseline option I had ticked in the app. So when I was hitting my targets I was more often than not in big deficits leading to the tiredness, grumpiness and increasing energy deficit.

The moral of this story is thus - if you track calories for restriction make 110% sure you have a good handle on just how much activity (including and on top of training) you really are doing.

Over 9 weeks before the marathon I dropped 10 lbs, and unlike in the past have not seen any of the niggles, grumps, and fatigue in the process by linking in my pedometer. Yup I dislike technology's ever increasingly pervasive intrusion into day-to-day lives, but if you are going to utilise things like lifestyle apps make sure you view them 'in the round' and use them intelligently (if only so that way they work so much better at the job you have tasked them with).

Holiday running

Just got back from holiday, and I am feeling good because it all went really well and everyone had a good time. I managed to run four times in ten days, and on top of that actually managed to lose bulk rather than gaining bulk from holiday eating (and I still enjoyed all of the usual holiday 'treat' foods).

We holidayed in France, as we do fairly regularly, travelling down through the country to a different destination as we do without fail. This was the second french holiday where I have done a decent amount of running, I blogged about my first attempts back in 2013 - My French adventures with training.

For me it was a high mileage week and actually felt very good. Some of the runs were before breakfast, not through any design and more due to time pressures I 'enjoyed' running in a 'fasted' state (oh, how my body complained). The reason I was trying to maintain a good number of runs was of course because I have the Berlin marathon coming up on my radar. It is now just crept under the month to go and three weeks remain, so I couldn't set aside my runs during my holiday as I have my biggest long run coming this weekend and I would have struggled with that.

Rolling farm land and blue blue skies

Rubbish picture but shows the fierce sunshine

Melting, I'm melting... and about to collapse in a sweaty heap (!)

The scenery was fabulous and the facilities where we were staying made the 'job' of getting the runs done nice and simple (washing machine, great shower,... patio to collapse on and recover for five minutes after each effort). In fact facilities were so good I got to pick and eat fresh grapes from the vine, which tasted sublime. I ran in the mornings where I could to avoid the 34 degrees Celsius peak afternoon temperatures, and managed to find a couple of routes that didn't have over keen farm-yard dogs on duty (always a bit of a risk in rural spots I have discovered).

Mentally running on holiday was very liberating and let my mind escape the 'usual' routes of home where to be fair I probably don't appreciate the scenery quite enough. From here now I can take on the rest of my training and the challenge of two marathons in a month with a bit of fresh gusto...

Some numbers for August - 
Runs - 13 (14 - if you count the calendar month instead of full weeks of the month)
Total Distance - 166.3 km
Weekly distances - 47.4 km, 51 km, 17.3 km, 50.6 km

I am aware that these aren't stellar numbers however there has only been one month in my GPS records where I have run further in a month and that was in the build up to my first Berlin marathon. I could only hope that that is a good sign for this coming Berlin attempt.

Almost forgot the other great number from August from our 10 day holiday... 2 lb lost (!) - while on holiday, while eating great french food, while eating french patisserie for breakfast... simply a great surprise to come home and discover.

Trying to avoid the Christmas feast

Over the next few weeks I will mostly be trying to avoid the temptation to over indulge in Christmas feasting which is essentially an annual pitfall of mine. To achieve my food goals I am hoping the calorie counting approach combined with some regular turbo trainer sessions will see me through to January without extra poundage. Last week I suffered one of those Winter stomach bugs and found I over compensated when my stomach let me eat properly again.

The weekends parkrun went really well, I took it on feeling that a PB is in me waiting to get out. Unfortunately the stomach bug fatigue robbed me of the umph to go and get that quicker time, really happily though I did manage a consistent time that matched my last two parkruns. Perhaps Santa can drop a PB down the chimney for me over the Christmas and New Years period.

Over the next week I have to get myself into gear and get my Bath Half training on the road, so I am on the hunt for a good 11-12 week program. I'll thinking of a 'beginner' one so that I don't throw myself into it too hard as my main goal is Berlin and I am going to do all I can to avoid injury niggles.

Things are taking shape

Things with my running are beginning to crystallise for 2015, I have signed up for three races (two halves and a full marathon) and I have a several plans in full swing. At the moment I have shifted 10 pounds (4+kg) in the last couple of months, I have brought my 5k parkrun PB down (I'm knocking on the door of sub-25mins now), and I have a roadmap set out to try and achieve a good PB in Berlin next autumn.

For the moment my biggest concern is getting in and out of Christmas with diet intact and waistline smaller than it is now. Due to having lost well recently I am hoping that the New Year can bring a new trousers mini-spending spree that will really be a marker of good progress.

I hope with the holidays coming I will have a little more time to write about progress. I am not making any New Years resolutions, I am only determined to meet my Berlin PB goal - have you set yourself any 2015 challenges?

Mojo? Mojo? Anyone seen my mojo?

And so I went for my comeback run yesterday inspired by my recent reading and musings, and in fact it turned out to be a complete mixed bag of a run...

Pros

1. I did it.
2. Managed to complete the run with what felt like a new non-heel striking action.
3. I used the pair of less cushioned shoes I've had for ages.
4. It was raining.
5. I ran with a quicker cadence the whole way powered by a Metronome app.
6. I forgot my GPS watch (I didn't want to know my pace during the run).

Cons

1. It was very very humid.
2. I realised just how completely and utterly unfit I am at the moment .
3. My calves started to complain with 500m to home.
4. I had to put up with the Metronome app the whole way (my brain started to ache, tick-2-3!)
5. I forgot my GPS watch (I wanted to know my pacing after I'd finished).

All in I suppose I was pleased, but felt very far away even from tentative plans I was making back in May for better running ("Variety I hope will be spice of running"). I am back around the loop of 'lack of fitness' to 'some form of fitness' again, and I am not at all happy about it. Finding my running mojo will, I hope, sort this out though its obvious you can't shake a slump in a day (d'uh!).

I dared stepping on the weighing apparatus for the first time in a long time and it really slammed home how crap things had gotten in the slump. I am at the high part of an oscillation I have been in for the last three years of wandering up to nearly 15st and then down to 14st and back again. Thus, I am back using the MyFitnessPal app again albeit it with the heavy heart of someone who recognises as a yo yo diet pattern when he sees one. Perhaps this time, eh? Again I am hoping that moving / running will fix things here, as long as I can be smart enough to avoid injury.

Tonight I ran 8.5km of a standard loop with my running buddy, wherein we chatted the whole way and I found I was working much harder than my compatriot. This is all good though because when we get our act together the pair of us make a good motivational pair. I ran the whole way 'normally', in that I didn't accentuate any change of style (i.e. I landed most of the time heel first). To begin with I am aiming for one session a week of forefoot, hoping to bed it in slow and increase things gently. Almost certain I will run all my autumn events with no particular style in mind and see what feels comfort at different points in the races.

The biggest realisation that I have had is that I am going to navigating a difficult balancing act of fitness vs. form, it will indeed to tricky to do much quality running while I am so unfit and yet I don't want to run those 'get fit' runs in with a poor running form that might bring on old injuries... chicken -> egg, egg -> chicken??

Getting my mojo back

The last few weeks post-slump haven't really been too much different from the slump itself in that I haven't done anywhere near as much as I want to and I have eaten poorly. With that said I have signed up for 'new' challenges (two 10k races as well as the half marathon), I have been reading for inspiration, and I have been formulating (at least in my head) an 18 month plan to really tackle my running issues. Yup, as a runner I just said "I have running issues", a little strange perhaps but true - more something you might hear a non-runner say. I know a lot of runners want to change this and that, go faster and so forth, but I am trying to rebuild the love that I realise I lost a little whilst walking the second half of my last marathon carrying injury niggles and poor preparation around 26.2miles.

So from here I am running for fun again, aiming to enjoy race events, and taking any kind of pressure I can away from any run. I am going to get to the local Parkrun when I can and enjoy the event, I am going to work on my running systematically without a big stick with "go faster!" written in large letters on it. Somewhere I forgot to enjoy the fact that I used to be unable to do this running stuff without major issues, and forgot to just enjoy the fact that my body moving through space is so much more fulfilling than my body resenting movement and craving lazy time.

Part of my reconnection with running and hopefully my running mojo has been through reading and by reading I don't mean those 'how to' manuals I mean reading the life affirming types of running books. I just finished "Born to Run", having had so many people look at me a bit weird for not having picked it up... it was / is a great book and I think will aid my revival.

The copy I borrowed from a friend and read in a hurry - a book review post may well follow

Until I lace my shoes up next (as soon as I can, within the next 24 hours) I will really find out if my running soul searching has shifted the slump and delivered a hefty dollop of mojo.

I hope your running mojo is alive, kicking, and bringing fun to your runs.

Variety I hope will be the spice of running

So here I go with another plan, this time to build a base for the Autumn 10k and half-marathon races with the very solid ambition to carry everything through the Winter into an awesome spring marathon next year. Sounds straight-forward... ...well yes, and well no... in any case I have a plan and that is where to begin.

The 5 central headlines to the plan are:-

1)  5K Parkrun every other weekend to work on basic speed and improving 5k - 10k aggression.

2)  Swim once a week before work - to build on aerobic fitness but more over to recover muscle and mobilise all those muscles I forget about while run training.

3)  Get to the gym once a week - kinda simple no brainer to work on all round fitness / strength.

4)  Eat sensibly (the not so easy one)

5)  Run with some degree of consistency - focusing on technique and trying to crack the jog to run barrier (being as I have been stuck at fast jog speed for a very long time).

...simple? Well I hope so, I will let you know how it goes. I have my ever first Parkrun tomorrow morning so best foot forwards.

Watch out there's a plan brewing

No I haven't bought into some X-Files style of conspiracy theory, I have been busy fashioning my plan for the Berlin marathon - or my training and preparation for that particular event. I have you might note already raised the race into a fairly over prominent position in my mind, and to that end I intend to elaborate my motivations over coming weeks.

The beginning of a plan??  A work in progress...

As with all good plans first thing is always... first, and so I have begun to sort out the knee issue that stopped me running Milton Keynes marathon and started to build a solid (and mixed) fitness base again. I have opted for the start over in part because of the injury of course, but also to make sure that I reign myself in and don't over load intensities and distances too early in the piece.

Early progress has been a return to aerobics sessions, which my knee hasn't complained too much about. So here goes the base building.  It is my mission to run the best marathon I am capable of this autumn, so watch this space.

Cold and rainy, then warm and sunny - the weird British weather continues into May.

Re- rehabilitation

So I find myself, after the disappoints of last weeks new injury sinking my Milton Keynes marathon run, at the point of rehabilitating my knee. I have plans in mind regarding the road to my major goal of finishing the Berlin marathon, but in the back of my head are those lingering doubts "will the knee respond to treatment?", "is it a bigger injury than it appears?", "will I have to change my plan to run?".

It is only to be expected and I am delivering the nervous doubts in spades at the moment - I suspect because of the sudden appearance and nature of the problem. Any injury rehabilitation, let alone training cycle, brings those unknowns and so I am now trying to rationally work through them.

Sunday morning - ice-packing my knee and cursing my luck
(taped foot is to support the knee by limiting foot roll somewhat - apparently?!?)

The immediate plan has been walking, resting, popping glucosamine sulphate pills (eases my inner hypochondriac - I have begun worrying about OA in the knee joint), getting out books and looking for a training guide, and most of all sorting out my diet.

My diet is probably key here in my humble opinion as it has not been consistent of late and in hindsight I hit the last training block a stone (6.3 kg) heavier than I did my last (first) marathon block last year. Though pure weight / mass probably isn't correlated directly with the symptoms, it is the composition of the weight that I suspect does... suffice to say that I am not exactly lean just now (but then I haven't been truly lean since the the '90s - the ravages of student life and over indulgence over time).

So at the extremely real risk of repeating myself a little, this time* I am targeting the weight and more over body composition whilst working hard (with a little help from the physiotherapist) on general strength and flexibility, before I tackle the run training block in around a months time. It is a plan, and I am a past master at making the things, but this time around my motivation is total and drive utterly clear - I will run the Berlin marathon and I will run the very best I can!

* - seriously I'm beginning to sound like someone waking up with a hangover swearing he'll ever never drink so much again only to be back at the bar the following weekend downing doubles.

Monday in motion

So I arrive at the second Monday of January very much in motion. I have successfully turned around a bunch of bad habits that I acquired towards the back end of 2012, where I came down with flu and spent a month comfort eating myself in the wrong direction. I am some way to shifting the weight that I 'gained' during the illness and the festive season (though to be fair to myself the festive season was pretty restrained by my own previous standards).

On the move again is feeling great and each day the chest infection, that has had a hold on my lungs since just before New Years, is loosening its grip. All being very well I will be able to run this weekend rather than power walk. Not having run for so long leaves me curious as to just how much it will hurt and just where it will hurt - my feet, my legs, my shoulders, or simply my lungs from lack of proper usage.

The plan for my the first marathon of the 2013 'season' is still evolving, and I am refraining from putting anything in actual stone (i.e. sharing it) until I have a couple of runs under my shoes :-)

Diary - cold, sunny, dry. Grateful for being able to get busy again and enjoying the start of the journey back to fitness.