5 miles a week

 Still in the land of injury - as far as running is concerned anyway. Strava tells me I've been averaging 1 run a week and 5 miles for the last 4 weeks. After my last enthusiastic post  I ran myself into the ground again so I couldn't walk properly, and somewhere in that time I seem to have got the message that I'm not going to get away with just pushing through this time. I reluctantly gave away my Edinburgh Marathon place because it was one of the things that kept tempting me to up my mileage. I'm TRYING to run by feel and so work within the margins of what my leg can handle. There should be a 12 step program for it. Numbers anonymous. That's not a very good name - but - trying to hit a number rather than tuning into yourself to see what the 'right amount' might be - which is, of course, multi-factorial and ever-changing.

In the meantime I've been swimming more than I have for years. I've swum more than 17 miles this year! Again - according to Strava. It is very busy at the pool so not always the most relaxing thing, but with a 2 mile round trip on my legs to get there it makes a nice little package of exercise.

It means I'm spending a lot of time in Leith. Walking with a limp doesn't mark me out in the least because I'd say 70% of the people on the streets in Leith have something wrong with their legs. Leith Walk is under continual construction with the wretched trams so me and the other Leithers are funnelled into little rat runs down the side of the pavement where we have to negotiate our respective limping speeds. 

Blogger has started doing this annoying thing in the last year where it uploads your most recent photos 1st. I've rearranged them in the past, but I can't be bothered. So...most recent first....I went a cycle through the Pentlands on Monday. I've been thinking about going for a while but couldn't quite find the enthusiasm. On Monday I knew Peter was going to look for green hairstreaks on the gorse near the firing range there. First of all I thought I might meet up with him and then I thought I would definitely not as I would be there a lot earlier than him but then I made some odd route choices to get there and found that in fact I wasn't earlier than him at all. So I pushed my bike up the steep hill to near the firing range and chatted with Nick while Peter filled his camera with shots of green hairstreaks.

Afterwards Peter came with me (he had his bike with him) through the hills and then down the other side - the Water of Leith and all that. I am still super-cautious about cycling on gravel - I know it's ridiculous on a mountain-bike but I just can't take the thought of coming off my bike and hurting myself again. As it happens, I did in fact fall off my bike coming down off the Water of Leith onto the canal but it was entirely my own fault and in fact didn't hurt myself in the least apart from some impressive looking scratches.

We took the van out for a run recently just to see if it was still working. Now that there is no running there isn't so much incentive to go anywhere so it has been sitting kerb-side and rusting away. We took a trip to Postman's Walk at the back of Aberlady and had a look for orange tips (none), Holly Blues (none - although someone else saw some just the next day.) What we did see was one tortoiseshell butterfly so Peter photographed the hell out of it. We were heckled by a small but noisy robin.

And then there have been other cycles. I really hate cycling on the roads now so I'm always looking for road-free routes. It isn't easy. There's a lot of good intention in Edinburgh about cycle routes it seems - and quite a lot of optimistic sign-posting of cycle routes - that aren't that easy to follow. Since I'm just generally out to get some exercise anyway I don't mind getting lost a bit - it's always a good way of putting new routes together. One low point was finding myself at the notorious Sheriffhall roundabout the other day. That didn't seem optimal. I would love to go further and for longer but I think what I'm really going to need to do is put the bike in the van and get out of Edinburgh first.

A big favourite is cycling round the Dalmeny estate where it's only the first mile to the cycle-path that I really have to share with traffic. 

I have a thing I'm trying now since I'm injured anyway. I read a book by Sarah Warren called The Pain Relief Secret. I know how that title sounds. Like every other faddy book in the world claiming to have a solution to some problem which is likely not really a homogenous entity in the first place but rather a vague descriptor like "brain fog" that could be so many different things that everyone thinks they have it and they're willing to buy something to sort it....Anyway - Sarah Warren. She was a ballet dancer and having done all the things to herself that ballet dancers do her body was a bit broken so she set out to fix it again. She has a website The Somatic Movement Centre where she offers information and a series of courses of somatic movements which are designed to unravel the habitual patterns of tension we all carry in our bodies. Her work is an off-shoot of the work of Thomas Hanna who in turn developed his work from The Feldenkrais  bodywork developed by Moshe Feldenkrais. I started doing Feldenkrais exercises in 2018 last time I had a longer term injury and found the exercises extremely relaxing but also very surprising how they could iron-out sore bits in your body without it really being apparent how. There are two very good websites with screeds of free Feldenkrais Lessons at The Feldenkrais Project and at Feldenkrais Access  Anyway, it wasn't such a giant leap for me from there to think about what Sarah was saying. What she says in her book is that we all unconsciously hold tension in our bodies - different people have different problems. Our brains are designed to pay attention to novelty (because that has the greatest survival value) so if we start holding ourselves in a funny way - with any habitual thing we do like sitting at a computer or standing at work or whatever; our bodies will protest at first but if we persist with doing the same thing, it will stop the pain signals. At this point we have a muscle or muscles under perpetual tension but we have effectively lost control of the muscle - we can't relax it, because we can't feel it. She says that stretching can work in a temporary way - but ultimately isn't the answer because really you're fighting yourself. Dead peoples' muscles don't hold tension - so you never need to stretch a muscle, you need to let go of the tension. In order to do this we have to first regain our awareness of the muscle under tension. The way to do this is to tighten the muscle consciously and then very, very slowly release the tension whilst paying attention. In this way our motor cortex relearns how to use the muscle in a nuanced way.

But you have to do it systematically and slowly. I bought her basic course a couple of days before I broke my bastard ribs, so I couldn't get started immediately - but I did want to see what would happen if I went through the whole series of exercises. Because I had to put the whole thing on the back burner for a couple of months I am just getting to the leg exercises now. The main emphasis of the whole first course was on the core muscles. I tried some of them in the early days of ribs-gate but using my abs pulled on my ribs and it was all hopeless. Anyway - I'm  well into it now and really enjoying it. If nothing else the daily lessons are again really relaxing. I know I'm not exactly a poster child for good posture or function - but I have a kind of belief I'm going to get somewhere with it.

As I said I'm just getting into the leg muscles now and it's going to take a bit of work. Whereas most of my muscles in my upper half have some degree of nuance, my poor hamstrings which are tight as...I don't know what...and the left one tighter than the right, and probably responsible ultimately for the slew of injuries I've just been weathering...well I can hardly feel them - which in a way is a good thing, because if I can recover the feeling in them well maybe I can relax them at last. I was doing the glute one today for the first time. I'm lying on the floor following her instructions, she's saying 'do this do that do this,  now feel the tension in your glute...' nope, nothing, nada, well maybe....but it does come if you keep doing it every day.

So that...is the whole story :-). I don't know why Peter won't listen to me. I'm fascinating.

My big plans

 

Getting back from Tenerife my ribs were just getting better and big plans started to flourish in my small head. A tentative return to swimming didn't cause me any problems so that was back on the menu. Running was still sore with my ribs so I decided to try doing Jeff Galloway's run/walk thing and see if I could get some baseline miles in while also not hurting myself. A few preliminary jogs went okay.

I interspersed them with walks, which were getting a lot more pleasant now that spring has about sprung.

But the marathon is not faraway and it seemed like I might have to push a bit harder if I was going to get enough mileage in to realistically be able to do it. One very wet Sunday I set out with a head of steam - determinedly walking 1 minute and running 5. I was thinking I'd do 10 but ambition got the better of me. It was exciting being out. I met Roy Buchanan and then Aileen and then Paul Eunson. I had a proper blether with both Aileen and Paul and it was like being a club member again. It made me want to achieve great things....so I kept on going even though one of my knees was getting sore. I thought I might get away with it - carried on for 15 and it didn't seem so bad and I arrived home soggy but kind of triumphant. However after sitting down for half an hour I couldn't bend my sore knee leg. Ya wee monkey. So fortune doesn't always favour the bold.

A big fool setting out on a fool's errand.

So then it was back to walking around Edinburgh until I could run again - which would surely be soon wouldn't it?  Spoiler alert. No.

Here are some shots from around the capital. When I'm down I like to remember that it would be expensive to spend a city break in Edinburgh but I can do it all for free, whenever I like.

This has recently arrived at the Easter Road end of Albert Street. A bona fide case of wtaf.

The next good thing to happen was getting out on my bike again though. I went out one timid cycle where I was terrified of ice. It had been sub-zero the night before and there had been ice, but I waited until 11am and was cautious. I went out again the other day round Dalmeny and really enjoyed the ability to get somewhere under my own steam.

Meanwhile Peter and I have been out the odd run around Gullane, trying to see if I can manage some distance but I've still had knee problems; shifting, oddly, from one knee to the other. I had an exchange with a woman who puts up knee rehab exercises on the internet and she said knee problems are fairly common after a chest injury. I guess it's probably something to do with compensation.

So anyway, a girl needs a plan, and I have been formulating a new one in this last week. I'm hesitant to write it down as Fate has been laughing at my plans recently - but I've been VERY conservative in mileage for the last three runs I've done and although there's some knee discomfort it seems to be resolving quite quickly now. So maybe I do small runs on grass and let the rest of my fitness be cycling and swimming for a while. Maybe I can tinker with my form, since I'm not doing much. The plan for now, anyway, is to run around on the flat grass and see what happens next.

I went out to try this out at the Queen's Park today - doing 10 60second intervals on the grass with 2 minute jogs inbetween and it felt AMAZING to be running at any kind of speed again. My knees weren't perfect but it's hours later and there has been no big problems. I'm writing that while crossing my fingers and knocking on wood.

Holiday in Tenerife

 

I was trepidatious about this holiday before we flew out. Having somehow managed to injure myself consistently for pretty much 3 months it was difficult not to wonder what else could go wrong. Fate seemed to be laughing in the face of my attempts at positivity. When my right hip was injured I got into cycling and swimming. "Maybe it's a good thing" I would tell myself - "I'll be a more well rounded athlete now because of that injury." I had a brief period of feeling no injury just before and over Xmas at my sister's. Returning to Edinburgh I anticipated I'd be able to run although I was dreading how much fitness I would have inevitably lost and how much work I'd have to do just to get back to base-line. I needn't have worried because I injured the other hip pretty much right away and running was back off the table. I had about a day of stewing about it and then I jollied up and went back to the pool. "Maybe it's good" I told myself - "I'm enjoying all this swimming and my upper body's looking stronger". Then I took my bike out on an icy day and hit the deck and bashed my stupid ribs with my stupid camera.

"Maybe it's fine" I told myself and went off for a swim two days later. Stupid arse. It wasn't too bad in the pool but afterwards something horrific happened down my right side - the bottom of my ribs and the top of my stomach kind of swoll up. Getting into bed was a catastrophe. Then I'd lie there dreading the next time I'd need to get up to pee because to do that I'd have to disturb my bastard ribs. All the time I thought maybe there was a rib poking in my liver and that I was maybe dying but just kind of hoped not. There was no way I was going to go up to A & E and endure a long wait in a plastic seat and getting the evil eye from the receptionists, so I would just need to die if that was what was going to happen. The saddest thing would be that Peter would have narrowly missed out on getting a payout of a 'death in service' award from the NHS because I'd retired.

Anyway, I didn't die, but that was the end of swimming. Such a shame because there's a big outdoor somewhat heated  artificial lake in Puerto de la Cruz where we were going and I would  have really liked to have gone and spent a bit of time there.

Before flying my main concerns, apart from filling out all the damn government forms and getting them printed out and booking day 2 Covid tests and all the extra hoops that have been put in place, were trying not to damage myself and wondering how in hell I was going to hump my big ten ton North Face bag to the airport. Peter gets in a sweat on principle about not getting an airport taxi - I might have fought him claiming special circumstances, but I googled the prices and it turns out I am also too much of a cheapskate to get a taxi. So instead I managed to make my bags the lightest I ever had. I only took 3 books. I only took 2 pairs of trainers. My bag was way under the limit. The difficulties were all in the transitions - getting the bag off the floor and onto my back. Once it was on my back that was fine - it was just any twisting and heaving that was a problem.

Okay, fast-forwards - we got away with it. The flight was a little hell as it turned out we were sharing it with a hen party and some groups of - well are they soccer casuals? I don't know what to call them. Anyway there were maybe 15 passengers who had all been drinking spirits before the flight at 8.25am and snuck vodka on the plane in Pepsi bottles so the cabin crew had to confiscate them. 5000 years ago when I was young I have been known to like a party too but these ones were not nice. They were deliberately being arseholes to the cabin crew who were duty bound to try to get them to sit down and put their masks on.. I was scared the big fat fumbling idiot who was boring the poor cabin crew lady with how he was really a nice guy was going to fall on my damn ribs and ruin my holiday.  Me and PB just zoned out to the best of our ability until it was over. As our recent plane-mates made off in the direction of Tenerife Sur and we headed for the North I wished for them to have the killer hangovers they deserved with maybe a keen sense of shame and regret to go along-side.

But what on earth do you do on holiday if you can't run or swim (and you're too scared to cycle on the roads because they are fecking full on)? Well it turns out you can go for walks. Peter was very patient with all my limits and disabilities. In truth he knew fine if he wanted to go and do something more solid in the way of a day's adventure he was welcome to, but apart from going to the track a couple of times over the course of 2 weeks, he never did. He loves a potter with a camera. 

It turns out that going away on holiday and not being able to do very much is actually quite relaxing. We dreamed up mid-sized adventures for ourselves on a few days interspersed with more local days. Wandering about in the sunshine there was just so much to see. and we easily spent hours and hours wandering around and taking photos. Peter was much more active in deciding in advance what he wanted to see and going looking for it (butterflies, birds) and I was more interested in just seeing what came to us. Oddly then I tended to spot the things Peter was after when I wasn't really looking for them.

We had access to a small selection of Spanish tv channels that held no interest so we generally ate and looked at photos and listened to music in the evening, Peter swigging three glasses of wine to my one.  I had the more powerful 'device' having brought my lap-top and I somehow got control of the music. Peter suffers along but YouTube has sussed me out and no matter what we started out listening to sooner or later it would put on Radiohead, New Order or the Cure. After a while he'd raise an objection. He likes music for hibernating to though. It was hard to find a middle ground.  I had happened upon Bill Evans a while back and listening to his music proved to be possible for both of us. I remarked to Peter that although his music was fairly upbeat there was an underlying note of melancholy and I bet he'd had a sad life - so I had a bit of a google and kind of regretted it as Wikipedia described a short life marred by an abusive, drunken father, drug addiction, the loss of his friend in a car crash and his brother to suicide and then his own death at just 51.

Wine and Jazz evenings are good anyway. I'd recommend them.

Another real feature of the holiday was the fantastic shower. We had one of these showers with a huge great big head and strong water pressure that just knocked all the thoughts from your head and tensions from your body. As our shower spits out a weedy amount of tepid water - fine in the summer but chilly in winter, this shower was a big hit with the team and we were probably the cleanest we've ever been.

On top of that I got into having marathon sleeping sessions where I dreamt long complicated and involving dreams every night. Most diverting. It only really got properly light at about 8.30am so there was no hurry to be up and out.

So it was a good holiday. Who knew that not doing very much of anything at all can be so diverting? I think I probably used to know it but had forgotten.

I would still like to go back and be able to use the track and the big, big outdoor swimming pool though. Maybe next time.

J(a)NU(a)RY I - anag

 See what I did there? The clue was in the name of the month. How had I never noticed before? January 2022 has been a beezer of a month.

January 1st was a nice day. I went a run round Arthur's Seat and extended it up the High Street a bit. My right hip seems fine now, but my left hip started to get a bit uncomfortable about 5 miles in. I didn't think it would be anything serious, just did some stretches and stuff when I got home.

I even gave it a couple of days - going for a walk with Peter on the Sunday instead of running and then nothing the day after.

I was off on the Tuesday so Peter and I went to Gullane. It was a lovely day but my hip was tight. I thought it would ease off as we ran but actually by the time we got back to the car I was hurpling. I was mightily fucked off but then took a day off and went swimming on the Thursday. I had got my head round being a bit patient again and going swimming and cycling until this injury came right.

Getting back in swimming was good and I was starting to think maybe it was a good thing that my running had stalled again because all round it's probably better for me if I diversify. 

But then I went a cycle the next day. It had been really cold over night and I knew there would be some ice and I was super careful until at Cramond I was caught out by some totally black ice. The bike went over sideways and I  landed on the side of my head and my right side. Unfortunately I'd put my camera in the side pocket of my rucksack so it was like landing on a brick with my ribs. There was a man and his wife and child there who were asking if I was alright, and I sat on the ice for a while trying to assess that very thing. I've hurt those very ribs before - probably cracked them although I don't know because I didn't bother going for an x-ray since they can't do anything anyway. At first I couldn't feel much there so I hoped I'd got away with it. Fat chance. As I got back up on my feet and shuffled off with my bike the pain in my side grew and grew. Oh my God the regret! Why did I go out on my stupid bike? The thing is while I was on my bike I was in a bad mood about my hip. Now I'd have given anything to be back in the world where I only had a hip injury! I could see now plainly that I had in fact had it made - all the swimming I wanted and cycling as soon as it wasn't icy. Aaaaaaaaaah! I was still holding onto a hope that maybe my ribs wouldn't be too bad though - so maybe I could still go swimming.

Two days later  I did go swimming and it wasn't too bad at the time - although I had to stop if I was breathing too heavily because that was hurting - but afterwards the muscles around the floating ribs on my right side went into a big tight cramp and I had a rather perturbing thought that maybe a bit of my ribs was poking into my liver. I'm never exactly sure where my liver is but it's round about there. It was really uncomfortable. Sitting on the sofa was sore. Trying to get horizontal for bed was a fucking crisis and the thought of having to get up for a pee was torture. I swapped between the two available positions, lying on my back or on the non-injured rib side getting maybe 20 minutes grace out of each position until it was too uncomfortable again. Maybe about 5 in the morning I got into a longer sleep and felt almost comfy at 7.30 when it was time to get up.

A day of work was a welcome distraction.

Then I ventured out a wee walk the next day.

I went out just at sunset and walked just shy of 3 miles. My hip was tight and uncomfortable all the time and didn't loosen off.

I'm giving it to you blow by blow aren't I? Lucky you. So anyway I took another 2 whole days off after that and just stayed inside the flat. I've been doing the dishes and thinking about tidying but not really doing it. Also thinking about packing because we're supposed to be going away next week. I've done a gazillion Feldenkrais lessons which usually does something good in terms of relaxing my muscles. What the heck is up with my left hip I don't know. I do not understand it. It's not really my hip. It's the hip area - at the back. I think it's stabilising muscles. I really don't know what it's all about.

Yesterday I ventured out to the Tesco recycling bins with my excess running shoes and then went to Lidl. My flipping hip was sore much of the time - uphills being slightly better. I came home and did another gazillion Feldenkrais lessons.

Today I woke up feeling a bit better. (Shhhh, don't jinx it.) I went a conservative, conditional stroll up to Princes St - I can still feel my hip but it was like whatever is tight in there was relaxing from time to time.  It wasn't just continually tight.

So whoop-de-do. I'm actually scared to go swimming in case I do myself a mischief. I don't want to go cycling because I know the stretch forwards will be sore on the bike. My ambition is to not make myself any worse before going on holiday. It's amazing how quickly and dramatically your horizons can narrow. Anyway, I really enjoyed getting out for a walk today.

So, emmm, Happy New Year! Get your lucky white heather here!