Still running

Lazy way of posting August photos - watch it on HD

So a few weeks on and we're still running. I signed up for Jedburgh Half and the Edinburgh Marathon next year. Now Peter has us signed up for the Borders XC Winter series. Fingers crossed we can keep on keeping on!

Because of Jedburgh half I've got myself to run the half marathon distance a few times. First time I ran it all on road with Peter, up the cycle path and down to Cramond and back home. It was not too bad until about 8 miles after which it became increasingly a case of just digging in and keeping going., but we made it.

The next time I did a solo one from South Queensferry to Home. We had a guy in digging out the rot from under where our shower was and it seemed a good idea to absent myself for a good few hours. The wind was behind me and the sun shone and it was mostly a pleasant experience. I ran in to clubmate Karen Munro whose son had just done an overnight across-the-country ultra so we had a chat about that. He had made the route himself using Google, choosing mostly A roads, and Karen told me about how scary it was (she went along to support) hoping he wouldn't get run over in the middle of the night. However, he made it, and all was well.

The last few miles along from Granton to home were grim, but not as sore as the previous one.

Since then Peter and I have twice run down the coast from Longniddry to North Berwick. The first time we went through the dunes and the long grasses so that was much slower. Yesterday we started out on the same run, but as we ran into some early butterflies, we took a route via various Buddleia bushes in the hopes of seeing some more. The morning sunlight faded however and there were no more butterflies to be seen.

It meant we were on better paths, so it took us less time. Round about 8 miles or so  my left hip started to give me some gyp and so I had to shut up and concentrate on what I was doing and not just chat with PB. I'm not out of the woods but also not in the woods. I finished the run without anything getting any worse and today I seem okay. I think my left side is just weaker than my right side. Everything up to 6 miles is now easy-peasy.

We've been doing some interval training too. It's great to be training together again, and Peter's sciatica has receded as we've been doing more. So far it has been intervals on the grassy hill under the crags. (I think Peter calls this Salisbury Hill). I should probably think about trying to do some speed training for half marathons although Jedburgh is in 4 weeks so it's nearly time for the taper.

Here's a spooky little story from today.

Today is my dad's birthday, or would have been except he died in 2000. The man was nuts about (and made) small sailing craft and I grew up, never paying much attention to boats, but immersed in a world where boat words were so common you would hardly know you knew them.

Today, because I was a bit stiff and sore, I went for a swim and then to the gym. One of my gym things is going on the assisted pull-up machine. 

The assisted pull-up machine faces a large tv screen and it's the only place in the gym where I would see the screen. While I was watching, as I was heaving myself up, I saw what my brain told me was a Drascombe Lugger, - some kind of yawl that dad had a thing about. Not only that but it was in a very familiar looking bit of water. Could it be? I thought I saw the house which was the last house we stayed in in Orkney - in Stromness - and then the boat sailed out and I could see Graemsay and the Hills of Hoy behind. Yep, it was definitely Stromness harbour.

The scene changed and I finished on the machine and I thought I'd have a look and see what the program had been when I got home.

So I found it. It was this https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001s2w7/scotlands-sacred-islands-with-ben-fogle-series-2-episode-3  at about 7m11s in.

What are the odds?

Holyrood Parkrun PB

 

Nick, Peter, Mary & Dod

Photo credit; George Dod McMullan

Went to Holyrood for a parkrun this morning and ran a course PB. Hurray! Super-chuffed. I thought it was possible because I went back for the first time since January a few weeks back and I ran the 2nd fastest time I'd done on the course. That was very unexpected because I've not really been doing any speed training.

Here's what I think did it;

Zwift indoor biking sessions, one or two a week.

Strength training.

Eating more protein.

Trying the Feldenkrais approach to moving - doing what feels good and aiming for comfort.

Robert Heggie's book and audio-course "Running with the Whole Body" which again uses the Feldenkrais method to improve inner sensing and movement patterns rather than trying to adopt "good form" in an outside-in way.

Mobility exercises - I've been using a set put together by a company who do running coaching for older runners. I haven't signed up with them but they have free content that you can access if you give them your email. I think they're pretty good. Here's their website link.

This afternoon I have accidentally signed up for the Edinburgh Marathon next year and the Jedburgh Half. It's Aileen Ross's fault. She knows why.

That be all.

This runner V3.0

 Well something like version 3.0. 

Quite often when I'm doing some kind of exercise I think of a blog theme - but then when it comes down to it I can't really be bothered. 

The grand theme for this blog was something about how mental and physical resilience are the same - but I can't even remember what it was all about now.

I think I'll just say that it's nearly July and last time I wrote a blog I was surprised that it was April. 

Last time I wrote a blog I'd knackered my foot but it was recovering. It continues to recover, in fact I don't give it much thought now. I'm back to running - albeit cautiously, and I listen particularly for how my left foot is doing, but it's not the only factor. I have to listen to my knees now too, and recently my right ankle has felt a bit weird.

Before I hurt my foot I was doing quite a bit of speed training, so I think that was maybe too much. I've been doing intense sessions on my bike indoors where I don't have to worry about stopping for traffic lights or hitting pedestrians and I never touch my brakes. I can never get my heart-rate up as high as I can running at speed but I can still get a good hard session in with much less impact so I'm less apt to hurt myself.

I've been swimming too and going to the gym, but something about it being the height of summer makes it hard to think about going to a warm indoor pool unless it's really lashing down outside - which actually it quite often has been....

Talking of lashing it down we've had a few sad watery ingress stories. The first was that we've got a new downstairs neighbour who has been doing work on his flat. Amongst the things he did was take out a false ceiling in his kitchen which revealed that our shower has been leaking down into his flat! That's bad news. Trying to get a plumber has not proved all that easy, but we have someone coming now on Thursday. We're hoping that the water leaking has not been going on for too long and hasn't done too much damage and that it's a simple fix - but you never know until you know. Meantime we haven't been using the shower but have in fact being using a large plastic garden waste bucket to have a standing bath in. It's more than some people have got, but it isn't ideal either.....

So that was watery ingress story no.1 - or probably watery outgress from our point of view.

Watery ingress story no.2 was that one night the skies opened and the rain rattled down in a way it rarely does. Sometimes when the gutters are blocked on the roof, with a large deluge of rain, the water finds its way through the wall. It's happened like 3 times in 25 years. Well it happened again. We got a little bit of water coming in and thought "damn we better get the roof guys to come and look at the gutters", somehow our downstairs neighbour got a whole lot more - so came up knocking gently on the door, saying "I'm awfully sorry but". Technically, I suppose, we don't actually have to sort this out - but the flat next door is rented so I don't think they give a stuff, and the flat on the other side is an uninhabited council flat. So anyway we've got the roof guy lined up and he's had a look and there's this and that to do. Because we're organising it, we'll have to try and recoup the costs from our neighbours. We used to have a bossy neighbour called Carol-Ann who seemed to revel in this sort of stuff and was forever having house meetings and putting fliers around the flats and getting things sorted out - but she moved away. For me and PB, we don't revel in this stuff. I'm trying to channel my inner Carol-Ann.

So next week is a kind of ground 0 for unwanted practical tasks. I've got an MOT next week, and a guy coming about replacing our windows (that was my idea, while everything's annoying anyway we might as well get all the things done we've been putting off) and then the plumber on Thursday.

Why am I telling you all this? Och why not.

Meanwhile it's been a kind of cold and wet June and PB is not his best self at the moment. He's had a sciatic thing since probably April and it is dragging on and on. I feel sorry for him but also annoyed that he won't go and see anyone about it. Well he's going to see someone tomorrow, so I'm delighted about that. He has been going about lamenting the lack of butterflies and the weather in "this country" until I can't stand it any more. But he's in pain.

I looked back and saw that I'd taken loads of photos this month and despite the popular narrative that the weather is terrible and everything is broken, it's clear that we've had many good days out in fine weather, and seen many beasties. And to my delight I have even been away out in the Pentlands for a semi-run by myself.

I have far too many photos from June to publish them all here and I'm too lazy to choose so I've made a wee slide-show and posted it to Youtube, so you can see all my superb pics and listen to Underworld. But make sure and watch it in HD or it will look crap.

Thanks for listening :-)

Is it really April?

 Hello. So what's been happening? Well I was going along running fairly well and then I hurt my foot.

Peter had had some kind of an injury - I can't even remember what - but it meant he couldn't run Parkrun full gas, so didn't want to do it at all. I had been finding parkrun was turning into more and more of a torture as plateaus were reached, so we started doing speed training on a Saturday instead - often on the Meadows but also sometimes at Arthur's Seat.

Nothing obvious went wrong. I was trying to do plyometrics, so maybe it was that. I was trying to do a deeper squat, so maybe it was that. I went to a lifting class  - I'd been meaning to do this for ages and signed up for all 10 classes at Edinburgh Uni - but I found it demoralising. We had to partner up and my partner didn't really speak English. We were meant to be the same height but I was a head taller than her. We had to keep raising and lowering the safety bar. It was like a bad episode of Mind Your Language. Did you ever see that? I never watched a whole one. Excruciating and not at all funny. Like my lifting class. One of my take homes from lifting class was that you should really be going into a deep squat with your feet flat on the floor to lift. I've never been able to do this - not even at Brownies - not even when I was 8 years old. Don't ask me why we were supposed to squat at Brownies. That's just what you do when you're in  a ring around a big mushroom.

Look how well-ironed my uniform is. Oh no it's not - it's fresh out the packet! It would never look like this again.

Anyway, what I was trying to tell you was that I did try getting into a deeper squat. Nothing popped or "went" or broke, but a little while after that my left knee was sore, and then that seemed to go away, and then my left foot was sore. It didn't seem to be all that sore so on Monday 12th February I went out a run on it, hoping it would just fade to nothing as many aches and tweaks do, but instead it became extremely sore and I had to hobble home.

That whole first week I couldn't put my weight through my left foot. I had to go about the flat holding onto walls and counters and surfaces and sinks. I thought about going to see the doctor or a physio but I didn't think there was much point. Also, how was I going to get there? 

The next week I hobbled down to the swimming pool and it was excruciating but I got there and it got me out the flat. It was good to get in the water, where I was absolutely fine.

As soon as I could, I set up my bike trainer and it was great to ease into a few harder sessions. I used to kind of laugh at Zwift - how could anyone cycle 30 miles alone in their room? I really like it now. I've had to get off my high horse.

The next week I went to see James Beavis again, the acupuncture and tui na massage guy. He threw everything he had at my foot, to help it to heal as quickly as possible and he told me to massage it every day with this strong smelling stuff - Hysan muscle comfort oil. The smell is STRONG, but the effect is good. Then I'd soak it in warm water - all to increase the circulation so that it had everything it needed to heal.

Before I'd broken myself I'd insisted we book a holiday to Majorca and we were set to go on March 1st - so that was my goal - to get mobile enough so I could lug my baggage to the airport and get through security and all - to just do the basics.

MAJORCA

So what did you do in Marjorca?

Well I thought I'd just swim every day because it looked like there was a nice-ish pool at our hotel. When we got there though it was full of leaves and closed until April. It was smaller than it looked in the photo - of course it was - so I think I would have gone a bit mad swimming up and down it anyway.

I could walk if I limped in quite a marked way - it seemed a recipe for futher injury but also I wasn't planning on spending a week just lying around in a hotel room. The weather was nice - sunny and windy and about maybe 12 - 14 degrees - fine for moving around but not warm enough for lying around. There was a bit of wooded hilly land just near our hotel so we set off up the hill to explore that. To our surprise there was quite a bit of butterfly activity - in fact, honestly, it was like we were welcomed to Majorca by the local wild-life. Our very first trip into the woods we were greeted by a humming-bird hawk-moth, which (they never do this) settled on a rock and sat still so we could take photos.

We were also charmed by the sight of tiny chains of caterpillars, marching across the forest floor.

We thought these caterpillars are cute but apparently they're a problem. They are Pine processionary moth caterpillars - and apparently they can give you a nasty toxic sting if you touch them. Before we knew this, Peter did in fact pick one up and play with it, but he must have not annoyed it, because he didn't get stung. He just wanted a good photo.

At the top of the hill we were greeted by Swallowtails and Wall Browns.

We hadn't really thought there would be many butterflies about - but as they days went on the tally grew. Let's just look at their pictures. Warning; some of them aren't butterflies.

common blue

common blue

malarkey

grasshopper (missing a leg, wasn't us.)

hawk-moth casts a long shadow

holly blue

Lang's short-tailed blue

linnet

Red Admiral

Red Admiral

Top o' the hill.

Small copper

one and a half small coppers

small (blurry) heath

Southern fried chicken Brown Argus

Southern Brown Argus

Speckled Wood!

Tortuga!!!!!

I managed about 5 miles most days and even did 9 once. This was way more than we'd been hoping for so was really encouraging. I was slow as anything and Peter had a free rein to take off on his own if he wanted but once there are butterflies around he is happy and actually was moving more slowly than me a lot of the time.

So now weeks and weeks later, I have been just assuming I had a stress fracture - or a stress reaction - which I'd never heard of before but apparently is a thing and it's the thing before a stress fracture. I found a program on-line which wasn't meant for plebs but a pleb found it and has been using it. It gave ideas about what to do in what order to rehab the foot - so I've been doing, as it's become possible, walking without a limp, heel raises, some very tentative hopping and a bit of skipping as well. I've moved onto a "back to running" program and I've done three runs now with progressive amounts of running and walking. I'm trying to be careful. I've started to think about doing a run-walk marathon. I've been on about this before. Jeff Galloway is a big proponent of mixing walks into your runs which he says works really well and can even make you faster. I'm not really looking to get faster but I would like to be able to go longer again - so maybe that's my way in. So I'm thinking about doing that once my foot feels normal - which it doesn't yet.

Holiday Snaps

With Laurie Anderson Excellent Birds.

 

TIME FOR A YEARLY ROUND-UP

 Oh no you're not going to tell us all about your knee again are you?

Well no, not really. In order to save a lot of chat I have prepared a graphic for you. My year in sport.

I think getting out on my bike was the best thing about this year, sporty-wise, and I'm hoping to do it again and do it more when the weather gets better. 

Meantime, we're recently back from Tenerife. I'm still carrying extra beef from the chips'n'beer, but it was lovely to be away in the warm sun.

We spent a bit of time with Colin and Joan Wilson, while we were out there. I knew who Joan was back in the day because we were hill racing at the same time but I don't think I'd ever had a conversation with her. Colin is also a keen runner but is big into butterflies too, so he and Peter had been trading butterfly chat on t'internet and we realised we were going to be in Puerto de la Cruz at the same time.

It was really nice to have company on holiday - usually we just go ourselves. We all ran on the dirt running track at the side of town and Colin and Joan got us to come and swim in the harbour.

Joan and I swapped stories about how we were trying to adapt to aging and what races we had done and might do and what we were thinking about training.

Here's a bunch of photos in no particular order.

At the harbour

At the track

At the track

Colin and Joan arriving for a track session

The water was a little bumpy in the harbour!

Colin and Joan again

Even just looking through my photos there made me want to be back in the w-a-r-m sun... I need to make a wee slide-show to music of all the photos.

But meantime, since we've been back we've squeezed in 3 parkruns, and at every one my knee has been feeling better.

We were out there this morning at Holyrood Park. A lot of the local parkruns were cancelled because of flooding and ice, but Holyrood went ahead. I felt the best I've felt post this last injury and the first 2 miles were the quickest - but I eased back on the downhill because I just couldn't face slipping and getting another injury - so I was 5 seconds slower than last parkrun - but I felt better. My weekly mileage has just gone over 20 miles - and I'm not really trying to push it up, but I do feel stronger. 

So present at Holyrood this morning were some more Porties who I have not seen in a while. Shelagh was telling me she has osteoporosis so has to have some horrible infusion in a couple of months time - she was keen not to fall on the ice! Janis was telling me she's had a cardioversion for her atrial fibrillation and is feeling much better. I'm thinking that we have reached a certain age! I half-heard Shelagh saying that someone had compared the years of aging between something like 53 and 63 for women as running through an alley with a sniper shooting at you. I wish I'd got the detail. She said she thought it was just luck what happens to you. I find myself having this conversation with people more and more as we all devise our survival plans. I have no doubt there's an element of luck, but firmly believe you can stack the odds in your favour.

So this year wasn't as bad in reality as it was on paper. I wouldn't have been happy last January if you'd  told me I'd be injured for much of the year and not run for at least 7 months. I didn't love it but I am stronger and I really enjoyed getting out on my bike. I'm really enjoying getting running again now.

According to Strava I swam 62 miles in the pool, which I find quite amazing. I'd like it if I could get back running a lot stronger. Already I find myself thinking I'd like to do a marathon - but I'm not going to push any mileage at the cost of being able to run at all. We shall see. I'd like to do a lot more on the bike this coming year too. But Jim doesn't always fix it for you the way you want him to, so we'll just have to see. :-)

Happy New year.

Parkrun!

 

Holy cow! It's been a while.

I started doing little bits of running right at the end of September and have been playing it all by ear. Road runs felt worse than grass runs, so most of the runs have been on grass, up Arthur's Seat. I've been running 3 times a week at most and 5 miles at a time at most - at first the runs were more like half walking half running.

Then the 2nd week of October we both got Covid and I took two weeks completely off running. There's a spaciousness about having been away from running for so long because it's not like I'm scrambling to retain fitness - I'm starting from scratch so what's another week or 2's wait? It didn't really bother me.

My lungs have been irritable ever since and so I've not been pushing. At first my legs felt quite dead, but I'm slowly gaining a bit more spring. According to things I've been reading, as an older lady runner what I should be concentrating on is lifting heavy weights, doing HIIT and sprint sessions, and doing plyometrics. The trouble is when everything's held together with rubber bands and glue you're reluctant to bounce around too much.

I don't really know how to lift weights. I'm toying with doing a course at the Pleasance in January - which would mean getting up early on a Sunday morning to go - we'll see.

Plyometrics, flyometrics. We're not ready for that yet - springing, jumping, bounding and all that. Well actually I can bound a bit. Sometimes I do :-)

And intervals. I like intervals! I've been doing the odd test of speed, nothing as structured as an interval session. I do intervals indoors on my bike.

On top of this I've been trying to eat more protein - it's really not easy. The vegans say there's plenty protein in plants but when you look at the numbers there really isn't. What I'm going on is - again - advice to your older lady runner - we have more trouble maintaining and building muscle so we need to keep the numbers up - or that's what I'm giving a try at the moment anyway.

Lastly, well not lastly but even I'm getting bored, so I'm thinking about you - but another thing I'm trying which is most disgusting, is drinking fishy collagen powder because we lose collagen as we age and apparently it might help my body to repair skin, tendons, connective tissue. Seems worth a try - but honestly, two teaspoons of fishy powder in a glass of water - gag-tastic. I feel like Elizabeth Bathory drinking the blood of virgins to stay young. Fish virgins. You can get beefy collagen as well but I'm scared of mad cow disease.. If anyone out there said "too late", congratulations, you made an obvious joke.

So anyway, what I really wanted to say was that I went and did a parkrun today. It just sort of hatched as an idea. I've been going a run at the same time as parkrun these last few weeks because then Peter and I are both as knackered as each other for the rest of Saturday. This morning I had the notion that maybe I should just run the parkrun. It was bucketing down when we got up and so an off-road run wasn't all that appealing. Arthur's Seat has been very squidgy. I didn't think it was likely and I didn't tell Peter but I took my card with me just in case.

I had a good sized warm up and I didn't feel too bad so I went and stood a bit further back than usual at the start. The first mile was the trickiest because it's really congested towards the back and the last thing I wanted to do was a lot of braking and dodging around. Hell for knees.

But the field spread out and it was nice to not have that much pressure.

Running up hill on tarmac still feels a bit awkward on my knee, and steep downhill also needs adjustment - I was definitely compensating with my left leg - but the rest of the time I was running quite relaxed, and I don't think I made anything worse.

Getting to the bottom of the long descent feels like hell as they turn the gravity up to full again. 

Looking at my Garmin I could see that sub-30 mins was still a possibility so I tried not to slow down. I got in just a handful of seconds under it.

Hurray! First parkrun since February. All those months of not being able to run! 

So it was my worst time ever today and I got a right soaking but I was 3rd in my age category and I'm delighted to get round.