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.