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.
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.
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.
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