Going down!

 Here is my "fitness and freshness" graph from Strava for the last 6 months.

Going down!

In my last blog I was just starting to hope I'd turned a wee corner and pulling out of Injury Central.

Nope!  What I did was an ill-advised twist and busted a rib on the left hand side - or very likely not a rib but an intercostal muscle because I can no longer feel it and it's not been that long. 6 weeks or something. I was doing a hip thing where you sit and move your legs from one side to the other. If you're game you can roll over and onto your knees and get up from there. I thought I was game but couldn't roll over my swollen knees and hurt my side into the bargain.

When you've hurt your ribs you know but you don't let yourself know right away. So I went another run after that and thought it wasn't too bad. And then I went another run after that and it was too sore and I had to walk home.

I couldn't sleep on that side for weeks.

After a  few days of going about swearing I thought I'd get into some indoor cycling because it can really keep you fit. I pleased myself by knocking out some quite hard sessions and I felt capable again- but I think I maybe tore a muscle in my right calf.

So for a while I couldn't push through it.

I tried another bit of a run just to see if everything wouldn't turn out fine. Then I could barely walk for a few days.

God this is a miserable story. So here we are. Last week was when I could hardly walk. I've started recording my walks to Lidl, in desperation, and counting it as exercise. I have been keeping it conservative, small walks, no heroics, and this week two indoor bike sessions on Zwift,  but no sprints, no racing, no trying to get the green or polka dot jerseys. My left knee hurts a bit. My right knee is all swollen and tight and it hurts behind it. I dread the stairs which is a shame because we live up three flights of stairs. I have to hop and hang onto the bannister to get down. Going up isn't so bad.

So what is wrong with my legs? I have a few theories. Old age, karma, demons, who knows.

That's all for now.

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.

Yoginjury

I seem to be giving Amanda a secret signal

There was always a danger it would happen. Yoga is intensely stretchy and I am not. But I had been keeping my head and never going too far into a posture. However, last Thursday, which was the last class of the series, the teacher for "Beginners 2" had not shown up. We (Beginners 1) share a hall with them although they are normally secreted behind a screen - so we can hear their funny breathing, but we cannot see them.

So this night we had our class altogether, and instead of the usual gentle babying we get from Linda our teacher, everything went up a level, in speed, number of poses held, how long they were held for and how far we should take them. I did my best to keep up. I seemed to still be intact that night but the next morning getting out of bed I found I had a nasty pain behind my left knee. It's an old injury, I think it's probably one of the tendons that tie my hamstring on to the back of my knee. That knee hyper-extends if I'm not careful and I think this was what happened. It all just got too competitive between beginners 1 and 2.

My injury was still as crotchety as hell when I got out of bed this morning, despite  being fairly careful with it yesterday, and icing. I was praying I could still run. What use is a weekend if you can't run? I was sore limping around the house, but, as I say, I've had this before and running doesn't seem to make it worse. We had a plan to go to Aberlady and run approximately 10 miles. The tide was meant to be really low at 10am. It turned out to be so. It was misty and windless and the air was soft.

When we got to the far end of Gullane beach, we hesitated for a moment, looking at a dog that looked like our friend Amanda's dog Horatio. Then out from the dunes popped Amanda and Lucy Colquhoun and Richard + Harris the dog and Kipper the dog! Much dog and human fun was had. We hadn't seen Lucy since last year so we had much to catch up on. It's hard to see how we could have got the timing much better.

After a long stop we got going again. The tide was out so far we got onto Eyebroughy (?) Island for the very first time. It smelt very fishy and there was little sign of humans being there. This was more the bird's territory I think. I was getting very hungry by then though so I had to push on. Unusually, we had parked at Aberlady bay instead of Gullane so we still had a way to go and my tank was empty....

In the end the tide was so far out, causing us to explore bits of beach that are normally under the sea, that we ran a full 12 miles rather than 10.

I'm so pleased I can still run, although my leg was sore as hell by the time I got out the car.