The Edinburgh Marathon 2025

 This year I ran the Edinburgh Marathon with perfectly even splits, by which I mean I didn't run the first half or the 2nd half. I think I went out for a walk instead.

The last time I wrote I think I'd got my mileage up but was also showing the first signs of injury. Well the first signs of injury turned into a festival of injury and my marathon dream was over. It took a surprisingly short amount of time to get over my marathon dream. I went out a few cycles in the uncharacteristically warm sunny weather and quickly remembered that there was more to life than chugging along long stretches of tarmac. I'd forgotten how much fun just doing what you want can be. I even managed a cycle to Gullane with a swim in the sea when I got there.

I think I hoped this change of attitude might be all that was needed to shift the injuries, but it was not to be. It started with a sore quad on the left side and some swelling above the knee, but before I knew it my right leg got in on the act and did its own swelling. In fact it swelled more. My knees got sore after that but it seemed like that was more because the swelling was altering my gait than that anything had started in the actual joint. I couldn't do half the mobility exercises that had been helping so much because I couldn't bend my legs far and couldn't squat.

I felt like having spent so much time trying to rehab a knee injury two years ago saved me a lot of time. I didn't bother going to see a physio and I didn't bother going to see my GP. I took the diclofenac that my GP prescribed 2 years ago again for one day (I took it for one day back then too) and it made me feel ill and I read the side-effects and I stopped it again. It makes no sense to me to stop your whole body from producing prostaglandins and what-not and altering your entire biochemistry just to change one wee bit.

I looked to see if James Beavis who does Tui Na massage was available but he's away doing a course in England somewhere and not taking on new clients, so I googled for someone else and found a guy called Alan McIntyre who also does Tui Na massage, and is blind, and works out of a place about 30 feet from my front door - so I booked in for some of that. I thought doing massage if you're blind seems to make sense. If anything it would make you better.

What an experience that was! I've been 3 times now I think and I'm going back next week. He works differently from James (who I rated highly anyway) - he works with his partner Rumi - or actually I assume they're partners but I don't actually know. They're a team anyway. She takes care of getting you to the room and the things I guess it helps to have sight for - but she also does massage. Alan found all the sore bits in my legs and also in my back and in my neck and in my hips. Towards the end they took an end each and twisted me straight. It was amazing and I can't do it justice. It's a strange pleasure all those sore bits being met. By the end I had the sense of being a chicken carcass that has been picked completely clean, and that being a good thing. Light, empty and just made of bones. 

After the 2nd time I went they politely suggested that if every time I went for a run my legs swelled up maybe I should not go for a run, just for a while. I found this disappointing, but at that point I hadn't really given up on doing the marathon, or, indeed the Edinburgh to North Berwick race, or the Penicuik 10k. I could see the sense in it though, in fact after some contemplation I could see that it was, in fact, fucking obvious. So I didn't run for maybe 2 weeks.

We were busy anyway. We've still been going up to Aberdeenshire to see my mum. She managed to be out of hospital after rehabbing from her stroke in time for her 97th birthday. She wasn't all that impressed with being 97 but pretty much all the remaining family made it up there to celebrate anyway.

Mum, Karen and Andy and Thandi the dog.

 Sadly, maybe 2 weeks later she had a fall, and even though she told me she thought she had managed to slide gently onto the floor, this time she cracked her pelvis and is now doing hard time in Inverurie Hospital. I had a short phone call with her and morale was not good. "Why won't anyone fucking shoot me?" she enquired. I gave her the same answer that I later found out had been given her by other family members. Because we don't want to go to jail. Also, we don't have guns. Also, personally, I don't want my last memory of my mum to be her falling to the ground High Chaparral style after a shoot out, dramatic though that would be.

We went up again and saw her, this time in Inverurie and her spirits were not so bad. She is actually mobilising better this time and looks stronger. She's made a pretty good recovery from her stroke and  looks more coordinated. Scunnered though. I suggested if she really wanted to get shot she should matriculate in an American High School - but that didn't even raise a smile. It's the kind of thing she would have said to me to cheer me up back in the day :-).

My oldest sister and her husband Andy have had quite a year of it, with our mum and Andy's mum and dad all doing a dance of falling, breaking limbs and dementing. It seems totally unfair then that their big, faithful, friendly and well-behaved Rhodesian Ridgeback Thandi suddenly became unwell. What started out looking like a localised injury turned out to be a brain tumour and she had to be put down in the space of a week. They had a horrible week of taking her to the vet and trying to figure out what was wrong; in a short amount of time they were having to carry her because her legs weren't working - nobody could understand what was going on. The vets were thinking there must be something going on high in her spine and scanned it - but while they were doing that caught a glimpse of something higher up... and it turned out, if I understand it right, that a tumour had grown and was making her spinal fluid back up into her spine and causing the problem with her gait.  It was inoperable and she was disabled so there wasn't anything to be done. I think they were both still in shock when we saw them. It had been less than a week since it all happened.

Karen and Andy spent a decade or more living out in South Africa and have adopted some of the outdoors style of living. On our last night there Andy cooked for us outside and we sat out eating and drinking a mixture of drinks in front of the fire until the stars came out. 

It got cold as the sun went down, but Karen had a solution.

The back-drop of all this has been weeks of hot, dry and sunny weather - so consistent you could get used to it. It feels like Scotland discovering how to be the best version of itself. The other day I went outside and the temperatures had dropped and my first thought was "Oh that's it then, here's Autumn on the way" and then I realised it was only May.

Anyway, running. I went out two walk-runs last week and survived them, so I went out again today with Peter. He has not run much since I got injured - some slow runs heavily laden with cameras in search of wildlife, but no picking the pace up. He maintains he needs me to get him out the door. So today I got him out the door and we went a run-walk around Holyrood. I'm hoping that running shorter distances on grass will be acceptable to my legs and we can start to build again from there.

World enough and time

 Pretentious title - but the thing was this phrase was running through my mind, along with a whole load of other stuff on Tuesday. The day was beautiful. There was a light easterly wind - so a bit of a headwind, but nothing disastrous. I wanted to do a long run on the roads because the E2NB race looms as does Edinburgh Marathon. I have been doing longer runs on trails, stopping for sandwiches, but sooner or later I had to get more specific; running on tarmac, eating gels. Peter has no interest in this so it would be a solo trip.

And in the meantime last week my left knee had mysteriously swollen up over night. I never noticed until I tried to do a quad stretch and the leg wasn't for bending. My best guess would be I'd been overdoing the squats. I refurbed an old barbell we had kicking around the house last week and did me some deep squats with the barbell on  my shoulders.

Why on earth would you do that?

Sigh, because us older ladies need to stay strong. And it all seemed to be going well.

Anyway, that's only a guess, that might not even be it.

I took my leg with swollen knee out for a run on Sunday and it didn't feel like running was much of a problem, so I thought, what the heck, I'll do the long run on Tuesday if I can.

Tuesday dawned bright and cold and delicious. My legs were a bit achy. I'd done quite a lot of exercises the day before. (Why did you do that?) (Och, you know.)

I didn't feel great, but I didn't feel terrible, and backing down from a challenge always puts another dent in my dented confidence.  I stopped at Porty just to record how lovely it looked and then put the camera away until the other end.

The future is bright. The future if fuzzy.

My first stop was at Prestonpans. I thought that if my knee was having a problem with running I'd find out for sure when I stopped at the Coop to get some water. If it was bad I'd go up the road and get the train home. To my surprise, when I started walking, my knee didn't seem any worse than it did when I set off. It was just general aches I was dealing with. (What kind of army does General Aches command?)

My next stop was at Aberlady. The 3 or 4 miles on the sandy trails through the thorny bushes round Longniddry Bents had felt very hard going, and my legs were tired and stiff. I got some more water and some paracetamol too this time. The paracetamols had caffeine in them, and it kicked in pretty quickly. I soon felt a lot better and I was running much better again too. The point of the title is that you never really know if you're damaging yourself or not. For all I knew this was helping my knee. And there isn't time to test these things out in a scientific way. You just have to take your best guess and then live with whatever the consequences are.

I was tired for the last few miles but elated too. I was going to make it. My leg had held out. The sun was shining.

I had intended going into North Berwick to eat something when I arrived, but as I drew near the train station I realised I could probably catch the next train if I hurried. It was that or hang around for a whole hour for the next one. I picked up the pace and made it onto the platform and the train just in time.

When I got on the train I was going to text Peter to let him know I was still alive. I was distracted though because people were shouting my name. Who should come laughing up the train but Roly McCraw and David Alwood - my old clubmates and fellow runners. They had run round the coast and had something to eat in North Berwick. Had been sitting about sun-bathing on the platform when they saw me fire onto the train at full tilt.

It was lovely to see them and I'm afraid I spoke a lot, the combination of caffeine and 3 or 4 hours in my own head causing a torrent of thoughts to come tumbling out.

It was a magical day and I was delighted with it. My leg didn't seem any worse than it was  before so I chalked it up as a win and hoped that the swelling would go down.

But it did not.

The next day me and Peter had an appointment up the Southside. We have taken advantage of Free Wills Month and got our wills drawn up, and we had to sign them. Since we were in the area we went to Arthur's Seat and had a snoop around for butterflies and birds. There was a bit of a cold wind but it was sunny again and we found enough creatures to keep us busy for a few hours.

This slow walking around seemed to annoy my leg more than running and it felt fat and stiff by the end of the day.

Yesterday I was working so I did very little - I walked to Lidl to get some vegetables and made some soup. Top work-out. At the end of the day my knee was still swollen.

Today was forecast to be sunny and bright and Peter wanted to go to Postman's Walk at Aberlady to look for orange tips and holly blue butterflies. He was going to cycle and I said I'd tag along - maybe that would be better for my leg. Sadly, the sun didn't turn up. So we cycled to Aberlady into a freezing headwind and when we got there we availed ourselves of the nearest cafe.

Actually not a cafe but a plush golf hotel. It was jolly nice to have a sit down out of the wind though. 

Obviously I wasn't listening to other peoples' conversations because that would be rude but the guy at the table behind Peter spoke non-stop about celebrities and people on tv for the whole time we were there to his silent companion.

We took our time with our big milky coffees and creamy jammy scones and then braved it back out again after Peter had emptied his bank account up at the till.

Then back out into the wind, but this time it was behind us! A very different experience. We arrived home cheery.

So my knee felt really pretty good after the cycling.

I notice that several years of getting injured a lot has altered my attitude, because I hope I can get back to proper running training, but I'm also not overly concerned - especially if I can cycle. I'll have fun either way. 

Also I picked up a thorn in my tyre somewhere out on the ride - but my tyre never went flat until after I got home. That's a bit of luck.

Alloa half marathon and other stuff

 It has been a busy old month. My mum had a stroke at the end of January. Luckily my sister who is a newly-retired nurse was nearby and realised what was happening right away - so mum got really prompt help. None-the-less we were all, initially, not optimistic about what would happen - she's 96 and has had mounting health challenges for some time, so we thought this was maybe one challenge too many. Peter and I went up and saw her in the Aberdeen Stroke Unit when we heard she was at least stabilised. Well we tried to go one weekend but that was the weekend of one of the big storms - Storm Oewyn I think - and all the trains were cancelled - so we put it off until the next weekend.

(Our train the next weekend was 4 hrs delayed and I have only just got my delay money, after 5 emails and threatening Scotrail with the Ombudsman. That's the magic word I think.)

Mum was in surprisingly good spirits, even though her right side was weak and her speech was difficult and she had a nasal feeding tube. We (only half) joked that the stroke must have hit a gloomy patch of her brain, because she was really quite chipper, and not for giving up at all.

After we left she continued to improve and was moved to Banchory rehab. Banchory, how on earth does anyone get to Banchory? I hear you ask. And well you might.

We had managed okay with using public transport up to that point, but my sister is spending the early days of her retirement haring around the Aberdeenshire countryside like a blue-arsed fly (sorry about the mixed animal metaphors) visiting my mum and her husband's parents, who all have something going on - and I don't mean just visiting but making sure they're getting the right medication, are eating, are getting washed etc...If we went up there on the train, then she'd have to take us to visit mum, adding to her list of things to do for other people, so I thought it was time to get a car again. I liked the idea of being green and keeping it clean but....

So I got a new car. By new I mean 2009. I think part of the reason it was so cheap was that the previous owner was a dog; a dog who maintained the car pretty well but has chewed the gear stick quite badly, and left his scent - which can still be detected despite three smelly trees and a can of cherry smelling substance i got off the internet.

It's stressful buying a new car. (Unless you have pots of tin.) I did my head in for about 10 days looking at all the cars and looking up their MOT history and whether they were LEZ thingummy and whether they were economical and what-not. It's not that easy looking for a car when you haven't got a car as you have to travel to go and see them - unless you buy one off the internet - which is just a step too far for me. Surely that's just asking to be ripped off? I mean I hope not but...anyway. I don't have spare cash to throw around. 

Running all this past Peter was the very devil as he's fussy, fussy. I know he won't agree. He says I jump into things. I say he takes 3 years to make his mind up. We saw a car we both liked that seemed to pretty much cover everything we needed and I was going to go and see it and - boom - it was gone, sold. OMG. 

I had seen my car at a dealers nearby - actually where I bought the Berlingo. It's just 1 mile's walk. I was worried it was too cheap and that was a bad sign. I messaged them saying could I test drive it, and they said if it was still there when I came.

I did all the things that you would do in a sitcom about getting a new car. When I got in it I didn't think the gears were working as I was revving the engine like a pill and going nowhere. It took me a little while to realise the clutch needed to come a lot further up to engage and I didn't need to step on the gas like that. I was used to the Berlingo which would stall if you didn't keep its revs up until it was warm. I didn't look over to see if the car dealer in the portacabin was laughing at me.

After tootling around the block a couple of times, and checking to see if its lights were working I thought what the heck I will buy it. I didn't bother kicking the tyres.

I had brought a laptop so I could do all the things - get new insurance, get a breakdown service, buy a parking permit. I sat in the car in the dealer's yard and did it all - but when my insurance came through I saw that it was set to start from midnight. So I walked home. And went back the next day.

Nearly finished....the next day I drove it home. Sitting outside our flat with the engine idling I saw there was a little grey box flashing on and off on the dashboard. It didn't look very worrying so almost out of idle curiosity I had a look in the manual to see what it meant. It meant YOU'RE NEARLY OUT OF FUEL YOU TWATT. I high-tailed it down to the nearest garage for petrol When I got there I parked on the wrong side - because my petrol cap is on the left! I always wondered what kind of people had their petrol cap on the wrong side like that, and now I am one of them.

Me and P took the new car for a test run to Gullane the next day. It rained so much we never got out the car and we discovered it had a very squeaky windscreen wiper, other than that it was fine though.

So the next weekend we set off back up to Aberdeenshire - this time via Banchory.

It's a tradition for me and P to run up Cairn William and Pitfichie when we go up to mum's and this time was no different. We ran up in spooky mist and the sun came out just as we got to the top.

We ran up a month ago also when mum was first in hospital, but it was much slower and more treacherous then because the paths were covered in ice.

I do love getting into the different scenery - spooky woods and heathery hills.

We did three visits in three days to mum. She is physically a lot better - moving better, talking better, no feeding tube, but she is toiling with being stuck in hospital. She just needs to get a bit stronger if she is to get home again. The staff are stretched too thin to be around for her to do practice walks very often. I think the gloom part of her brain is also recovering from her stroke. She's doing her best but she is not so light-hearted. She hates having her photo taken and she hated me taking her photo and turning her into a mouse - but we had run out of conversation.

Meanwhile Peter went full-cammo to shoot photos of blue tits in my sister's garden. It was a sunny weekend, but not quite warm enough for butterflies, apart from a Comma that I surprised which took off like a jet, never to be seen again. The frogs came out however, and so they had their photograph taken.

So what about Alloa Half Marathon? It's a whole story but I've shot my writing wad. (Sorry for being so rude.) 

I had a plan back when I entered. The race starts at 9am so I thought I'd book somewhere to stay nearby and get a nearly full night's sleep. I stayed in an airbnb a mile from the start. Peter wasn't interested in coming - no way Jose! So it was me - tout-seul. I spent a near monastic night alone with just a Domino's pizza for company.

All the organisational bits went fine but when it came to running I was just a bit knackered. I had a cough back in January and it has never fully gone away. I can't help thinking some hot sun would help.

It would have been nice to have gone under 1.50 or failing that been faster than Jedburgh - but it was neither of the above  - 2 minutes slower than Jedburgh in fact, official time 1.55.28. Despite having a Mars Bar for breakfast! Disappointing. I have to remind myself that it's not that long ago that running a half marathon seemed well out of reach.

Next race is Edinburgh to North Berwick but happily that's not for a while.

2025 is well underway already!

 OMG We're well into 2025 and the last time I wrote anything was after the XC. I have been meaning to from time to time but that didn't translate into action.

Then I got caught up trying to find a neat way to  present my photos from Tenerife in December. 

So here is a slideshow of photos from the whole 3 weeks in Tenerife....

and here is one of the Mariposario.

It seems such a long time ago. We ran a fair bit, walked a lot, took lots of photos, had slightly too much lunch beer. I did some work online.

On the night before returning we went out for dinner and had a splendid meal. I don't know if it was this or just an accumulation of all the too much I had had for the last 3 weeks but I woke up at 1am feeling truly awful. After a while it was clear I was going to be sick. Then I was sick for the rest of the night. 

At first I felt like being sick might kill me. It was just too violent, but by the end of the night I was just like a student again, I had the process down. You just have to relax into it. I had a doubled up blanket on the floor so the cold tiles in the toilet didn't hurt my knees, and another blanket slung over my back so that I didn't freeze. According to my watch I had 1 hr 15 minutes sleep, and then it was time to set off home.

The whole thing was an intensely delicate process. The whole world was a disaster. Some guy was trying to talk to me while we were standing waiting for the coach back to the airport. He was loading me up with his misery, moaning about his holiday. I could hardly look at him. Someone nearby was smoking a cigarette. It was horrific.

The fast coach back to the airport took concentration. In the airport I thought maybe I could handle a diet coke. The caffeine in my system lifted me a little bit and I was able to breathe  more freely.. It must have been a long day for PB who was fine but was under orders not to talk or move too much.

It was Xmas eve and the plane was half empty, which was a mercy. We had no 3rd person in our row, so could spread out and relax. After a while I felt like maybe I could eat something  I think I had chilli and nachos. After about an hour the whole lot came back up again but I had enough warning and poured it all into the airplane toilet with consummate ease; a red chilli fountain.

We had a debate about taxi or tram home. PB thought we might get caught in traffic and also wasn't keen on the difference between the £7 or so for the tram (for me, it's free for him) and the £30 or £40 for a taxi. I agreed with him really, I was just a bit concerned about what would happen if I was visited by another red fountain on the tram on the way home - nowhere to run, nowhere to hide....I needn't have worried, I was okay. Pretty soon we were back in our very cold flat. One of our neighbours had been doing some painting with one of these strong smelling high VOCs gloss paints, which was a pity. We opened the windows up full despite how cold it was, and wrapped ourselves in blankets to eat tea.

After that I got a cold and a cough and my lungs are still irritated now. Other than that we're getting in the swing of the year.

We've been doing plenty of running. I've signed up for Alloa half and the Edinburgh marathon so I'm slowly extending the length of my long runs. We ran 17 or 18 miles two days ago - mostly off-road, from Prestonpans to North Berwick. I was very thirsty by Gullane but we didn't have any fluids so just had to keep on keeping on. I promised myself a pint of cider in North Berwick,.and that seemed to keep me going. It might be a dangerous precedent but it was delicious cider.

Happy New Year!