The first 4 months...

rain and sunshine

On a whim I had a look at my last blog today and saw that it was in December. I have a few things to tell you about my "injury journey". 

"Are you running like a gazelle now?" I hear you say.

Well not exactly.

Not exactly running at all in fact.

I gave it up a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't missed it.

Anyway, this is what has happened. I went to see Dr Pain Steven McQuinn again somewhere about January, and I told him I wasn't really getting anywhere with my running and I was thinking I might just shelve it for a while because it wasn't even enjoyable any more. I told him I was thinking about going to see a personal trainer or someone to help me get stronger, because I'd tried this on my own before but I knew that I was likely doing everything wrong and creating more problems for myself in the future. 

He said he went to a gym nearby and it had a few personal trainers there who he thought were excellent, so I looked it up and I made an appointment with Ross, who I have now been training with since maybe January or February. He listened to my story and got me to do some things and prodded the old legs and declared them stiff, tight and weak (but maybe more tactfully than that) and we agreed that I'd strip the running right back, or maybe even just do easy cycling while I tried to get stronger and more flexible.

I tried to do that, running  on awkward sore legs sometimes and retreating onto my indoor bike other times. Every time I rode the bike I hurt my left knee. Every time I ran I hurt something behind my right knee. In the meantime I did do the exercises he was getting me to do and I began to stretch every day. I hated the stretches at first and I still don't love them but sometimes now they make me feel better whereas at first it just felt kind of fruitless and unyielding.

We've been focusing on trying to reach the mythical region - the posterior chain - a land where people use their bum to do things. I did have a go at that back in 2023 when I'd goosed my knee. I went and saw a physio at the Edinburgh uni gym who gave me a host of exercises with exactly that in mind. I did do them and I continue to do them but apparently that never got them glutes firing.

Steven McQuinn was on the same thing - "You should be using your powerful core muscles" (He meant my booty :-) )

Me- "yes, but where are they, and how do you use them?"

Looking back on it I realise my left knee has been pretty good for a while now, so that's progress. For that I had to do squats with a band round my thighs and push my thighs out the way - I mean outwards - not just get them out the way!  For a while I thought I would only run, because moving between the bike and running was more confusing than just doing one thing or the other. I was just doing 3 or 4 miles though, at snail's pace, and every time I ran the back of the top of my right calf and the lower part of the hamstring would be irritated for a day or two. I was away on a course in Bristol in March. I took my resistance bands and did my exercises in my room at night. I went a couple of runs in the morning too and then limped for the rest of the day. It was embarrassing. Last time I was down there I was recovering from a presumed stress fracture in my foot, but I was running better than I was this time.

Running along the River Avon at the crack o' dawn.

We met every day in a big room. It was a bizarre set up. The lead trainer was an Israeli woman and she had been meant to have flown over for it, but the thing in Iran kicked off 2 days before the course started, and she couldn't get out of Israel - so - through the miracle of the internet she was beamed into the room on a big screen, as a fellow course participant remarked, like the Big Friendly Giant. I don't exactly get the reference but I liked the phrase.

For the first couple of days she had to leave abruptly on several occasions to go down to the bunker as there were air strikes on wherever she was in Israel. It made it all remarkably real.

It was a therapy course so as you can imagine everyone in the room had to introduce themselves and say a bit about themselves. A woman sitting behind me announced she was from Singapore and she was pleased to be here and then started to sneeze. She showered me in sneezes for a day or two, and when I got back from my course, I began to shower Peter with Singaporian sneeze water. You are it, pass it on.

I forgot to mention, all this time that I'd been barely running and injured and what-not, Peter had a big bout of sciatica. It started a few days after the 7 hills and 7 Beers shenanigans, which he ran with Nick. I was quite honestly surprised he survived. He came in after it and announced that he was alright, he was fine, then he went through to his computer and I found him there a few minutes later with his head in his hands. He hadn't drunk anything except beer or eaten anything and I think I maybe got him to drink a cup of tea. He wanted to tell me all about it but in that slow, ponderous way that the very drunk do, you know, that way that makes you want to kill them?

He went off to bed and even though I wanted to kill him I was also a bit worried that he might just die, so I went and listened for his breathing a few times. He was breathing fine and emerged  a lot clearer and now hungry a few hours later.

That was a hillier run than he'd done in quite some time and on the Monday he went out and did a coastal run too - and then somewhere about Wednesday his back started to hurt him and then in the next day or two he entered a world of relentless sciatica pain - which is just clearing up properly now. For the first while he really needed looking after because he couldn't stand up for long, couldn't sit for long, couldn't lie for long. It was a misery for him.

having a lie down in Leith

Sciatica boy

I got to try out all my gadgets on him which I've accrued since I started to take my career as an injured athlete really serious c.2021 or so. I've got infrared wraps, I've got a TENs machine. Neither of those things had much impact. I've got an infrared sauna blanket. That didn't help much. I had quite recently got a massage gun. I didn't think all that much of it, but that punchy little baby pretty much saved the day for our Peter. He'd wake up in the night with horrible crampy pain and then pummel it away with the massage gun.

This baby saved the day

So how did I get onto Peter's injury? Oh yeah, I felt guilty leaving him for a week to go to Bristol, but he had started to be a bit more ambulatory and was getting out for walks, so he had his birdy pals to talk to - men who lean on walls and look at birds, and there were some frozen dinners in the freezer.

But when I came back I gave him my cold. We both had it.

Then after a week of having a cold and not even bothering to run because it was rubbish anyway, I went for a run and 2.6 miles into it I got a sharp pain up the side of my right calf and had to pull up swiftly.

I was hurpling for a few days and it began to ease up but that did it for me as far as running went. I figured I would just forget about it until I was truly feeling better or never, whichever came first, and then start from scratch. I started cycling on the indoor bike again and something had changed with my left knee because it didn't hurt it any more. I still had to be careful of my right calf on the bike and couldn't go full gas at all - but it felt like modest progress.

So I went along to see Ross last week and all I'd done was strength training and bike training and my legs were relatively fresh and I had  a bit of a dream session - until I didn't. Everything he asked me to do I could do and from his face, I was doing it more easily than he'd anticipated. I was impressing myself. I was doing lunge walks with weights and high side planks and I can't even remember. But then he got me to jump onto one of these bouncy BOSU half balls and off again. I really didn't want to jump because of the loss of control, but after a few goes it was actually fine. But then he wanted me to jump on and then jump off backwards onto one leg at a time and land it. I wasn't super-keen, but I hoped I would just get away with it. It didn't feel great and then - bang - something was really sore down the inside of my right knee. I had that sickening feeling. I could still move it, but, you know, you can still move an injury for the first wee while before it seizes up. Phil Davies finished the Ian Hodgson Mountain relay on a complex fracture after he'd put his foot down a hole. The adrenaline gets you through.

So I walked the mile home on an increasingly sore leg, made it up the stairs, dreading the moment of when Peter would shout "how did it go?" and I've have to tell him I'd fucking fucked my stupid leg. That's code for I am beside myself with an intolerable mixture of regret, anger and despondency.

So that was Wednesday and it's Saturday now. I haven't been outside since. The first day it was just sore all the time. The next day I could get comfortable but it was super sore to walk on. I had to sort of warm up before I could put my weight through that leg and then not stay on it for long. Yesterday was a little bit better. Today was better again. I had a shot on my indoor bike. Garmin was suggesting I do a super-easy session and normally I don't bother doing those because it seems pointless. But today it seemed like just the thing. I listened to a talking book.

I've found two books to cheer me up over the last few days when I've not really been able to do anything at all. One was "In my time of dying" by Sebastian Junger. He wrote 'The Perfect Storm' which I don't remember all that well but I remember that it was well written and gripping. This one is about himself where at age 58 and ostensibly fit and well, he has a near fatal bleed from an aneurysm and is lucky to survive. The book covers the incident, the medical side of it, his brush with death during which time his dad appears and tells him to just relax and go with him. Sebastian's reaction to that is "No way!" He tells the story of his dad and his dad's death and the aftermath of his own brush with death and his questioning of what it's all about; his need to make sense of it. That was what I was listening to on the bike today. It's a good read (or listen) - he's a good researcher so he tells you lots of interesting things along the way. 

The other book is a book by a woman who was a yoga teacher with her own school who went out skiing at the age of 48 and had a horrendous accident in which she broke her neck. She is immediately paralysed and has to find a way to adjust to that. One thing is that she is more in tune with her body than most of us are because of the yoga. She finds ways round things - for instance the medical staff don't want her to come off her breathing apparatus because she can't use her diaphragm but she is convinced that she can breathe and in fact does manage to, and she also recovers some use in her arms and also her bladder control. She's a little spooky and senses energies, but also very practical and works now in...I think Vancouver...but with people with new spinal injuries and within the health system. She says herself she isn't a writer but she has a lot to say - so her book isn't the best written ever, but it's really interesting. And it's helped me get my injury into perspective - because - at least I can move my arms!

It's called 'Where Science meets Spirit' by Mary-Jo Fetterly.

So, to sum up; this runner is not running at the moment. Maybe later. But I did 10 press ups the other day. I know that's not very many but I haven't been able to do any since I got a frozen shoulder in 2021, so it pleased me. 

The other thing is I got another new gadget which is compression massage leg things. Called Fit Kings. I really like them. First of all I got some...I think it was Urevo ones which also had heat and I really liked them but they were faulty and so I had to send them back. The Fit Kings seem more sturdy and likely to last and they will do fine.

compressed air leg massagers

Look my phone smoothed my face out. I never asked it to!

December, December.

 I just found an old October blog which I didn't publish for some reason, so it's been sitting in draft. Presumably there was something else I was going to say or do but never got around to it.

I am still a bit gimpy but running about 15 miles a week, which is a whole lot better than where I was for much of the year - so I try to be grateful. My knees are swollen - or above my knees technically - which could be this or that. Having been to see my GP 2 years ago with a swollen knee I feel like there's no need to repeat that, although obviously I could be wrong. Don't you ever do this but I did take the course of Naproxen (I said earlier it was Diclofenac, but it wasn't) which my GP prescribed 2 years ago - and I think it helped my knee be less stiff, but didn't make a radical difference. I bought an expensive wrap thing which gives off near infrared light and is meant to penetrate into muscle and beyond and increase circulation and reduce inflammation and what-not. It did seem to help my calf heal as it had stayed the same for ages and then rapidly got better. The wrap thing was so expensive (I can't even remember now - like £250 or £300) that I found myself avoiding telling Peter - partly because I knew he would be snide about it but also partly out of some kind of archaic guilt. Then I remembered it was my own money and I could spend it however I wanted.

There is some research into near infra-red light and injury healing which I can't be bothered looking up. I think the story was that 'they' (the scientists of course!) were using red light to help plants grow in the space station and noticed that the astronauts skin was looking good afterwards - and looked into it and realised it did something or other. Elegantly put, I know.

I've still been going to see Steven McQuinn, and I believe in him. He is straightening me out. Thank God. I always knew someone should. I'll go back and see him in the New Year. I can't really begin to tell you what he does. I've tried already. He finds your sore bits and hurts them, and then you feel better afterwards.

Sometimes I think I have got it, like Eliza Doolittle, and I am running from my core - but it takes me 3 miles to warm up and by 5 miles I'm exhausted because I don't have any kind of a mileage base. So I'll need to be patient, which is not my strong suit.

Meanwhile we have just been to Tenerife again for 3 weeks. I had to limit what I did more than normal, which was a shame, but it was a nice time anyway. I have made you a ham-fisted slide-show because I'm generous that way. Music is Stan Getz/Astrid Gilberto "Girl from Ipanema" and I know - it might be a Portuguese - but you know, that's quite Spanishy.

Put the quality up to 720. Some of the photos from my smaller camera still look quite ropey at that.

It might be time to do a summary of the year because I may well forget to come back again until next year. It has been a funny old year and not always laugh-out-loud.

Some things have been outrageous. The outrageous thing for me this year is that Peter's lovely brother Neil has been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. 

He'd been having trouble with his swallowing and some trouble with his speech and had an initial diagnosis of myasthenia gravis. That's an auto-immune thing and isn't great but it can come and go and there are treatments for it. You can keep it at bay and sometimes it remits.

Motor neurone disease feels a lot more scary, and they've told him it's a terminal illness. I balk against that because they don't actually know that. It's not well understood, and sometimes it remits. So I guess you can say it's often terminal and leave it at that. It's affected his speech a lot, but he's still working because he wants to. Apparently it affects your metabolism so he's had to ramp up what he eats and limit what he does so as not to lose too much weight. He's being a star about it and tells me "it's reality" and shrugs. He's leaning into doing his music and art which he loves.

My thoughts about it are that life can fuck off with that shit.

My mum, who looked set to be leaving stage left is somehow or other still here. She had a stroke, recovered from a stroke, fell and fractured her pelvis, recovered from the fracture. It was her 97th   birthday back in April and we thought there wasn't much chance she'd make it to that - but she did - and now she could maybe make it to 98. Her take home piece about this is that she doesn't recommend living past 80 as it just gets worse from there. She doesn't suggest an alternative though.

On that happy note I'll wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year. 

October

 It's a grey rainy Friday and it's Peter's birthday. I have been to the dentist and then me and PB have been a wee walk just to get us out the house. He has just a touch of sciatica, although it's better than it was, and my injuries were feeling better too. Not running better, but better.

I've been walking but not too much and then cycling on Zwift to keep some fitness going. I still have to discipline myself not to try too hard because that's how I did whatever I did to my calf and that's what I'm still trying to get over.

Happy Birthday PB

I've been trying a few new things just to see if I can't rehab myself better, although I really think the most important thing is trying to be patient and not overdoing things. I am most at risk when I feel like things are getting better because I feel like just trying a bit harder will maybe do the trick, but it generally just sets me back.

I quite like trancing out on Zwift for an hour or two, cycling in a world with no traffic and no brakes and no headwind. I have a slightly uneasy feeling that it's morally wrong or antisocial or something. I went out in the real world the other day on my bike though and cycling in the traffic is not pretty. I came out a side road at the WGH, with the traffic lights, and a car that was coming along the main road must have gone straight through the red light without even seeing it - it never even slowed down - suddenly we were in the same space and should not have been - happily I got to the far side of the road before it cut through the space I had just been in. I don't know if it ever saw me. It pulled into the next road on the right, so maybe it did and had just gone in there to hide. I was left with an uncomfortable amount of adrenaline, wanting to beat on the car and say "you just nearly fucking killed me you pill", but there was no opportunity.

So cycling in the city sucks, and I can't get excited about flying about the East Lothian roads. Not at the moment anyway. Somehow I can't bring myself to go swimming either. I did quite a good stint in the last couple of years of going and putting in the lengths - but sometimes - especially at Leith Victoria - it's more like swimming in a supermarket queue than anything else - and I really like exercise for being a chance to let my mind roam free....

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Anyway, I was going to tell you about what I've been trying that is new. Well one thing is Steven McQuinn, pain medicine man. Well really he's a massage therapist. I had heard of him from a couple of Carnethies and also Nick Williamson. I had heard that he does some extraordinarily sore things but gets some quite amazing results. I was gimping about the place and thought it was time to try something different, and also I wanted to test how manly and brave I am.

At the time of going to see him, not only was my right calf sore but I had either a sciatic pain or a hip muscle pain that was really excruciating at times. Having to sit for long periods of time - especially driving, was really pretty awful. My left knee was giving me gip too, so walking up and downstairs was a problem.

Steven gives you a bit of talk at the start about what he's setting out to do. If I've understood him aright, it's something along the lines of...as we get injured and compensate we get misaligned and our core stops working properly. We should be working explosively out from our core but if the core isn't working then more distal groups of muscles try to compensate and do a job they're not really built for. Then they get injured and even more distal groups of muscles kick in to try to do the work. Something like that. So he tries to straighten you out and then works on the more distal muscle groups.. Also that we store old tensions and traumas and memories and they can release too. I'm interested in the parallel between this and therapy, because generally it's our compensations that get us into trouble. Something happens and we find a way of surviving and coping with the situation - but then we continue to do whatever it was past the time it still serves us and becomes something we are stuck in - like being too independent, or working too hard, or not working at all, or...you name it. There have been various therapists who have tried to work with peoples' personality structures through their musculature and how they hold themselves - anyway - I digress.

The first time I went nearly everything was exquisitely painful - he shows you how to breathe through it. Some of it I could nearly not stand. Some of it wasn't so bad. The most obvious immediate benefit was that somehow, amongst other things, he had got my left knee working properly again and I could go up and downstairs  on it. The stuff on the right hand side had eased a bit but hadn't gone away. He said my fibula wasn't tracking properly and did something to that.

I went back in 2 weeks and he worked me over again. Some of it was easier to take, which I presume means that I was carrying less tension.

He does some muscle testing before and after he's worked on you to see how easily you can push back with your quads and glutes and also tests how much your hamstrings will release, and both times there was a big difference by the end.

So what's next? That was a couple of weeks ago. He says go back in 4-6 weeks and we'll see where I'm at. I think the idea is that once you are working from a core that's properly released, any injuries you have will clear up. So actually a lot of it is doing quite well - the calf thing is the main thing

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.

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.