The rise and fall of Mr Mousy

 Good God, I knew it was a wee while since I blogged, but I didn't know it was that long. Hello again!

I actually was running from October to February, but now I am back on the bench. I wanted to post this great graphic which shows my sharp fall from grace from just before I retired from the NHS until recently.

The round orange dots are parkruns that we started doing every Saturday. Anyway, I was pleased to find that despite low weekly mileage my 5K times were improving. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that as you get older you want to focus more on trying to improve your speed than just knocking out a lot of base miles, and this seemed borne out as I managed to take a couple of minutes off my parkrun time by doing one speed session and one 'other' session during the week and a parkrun on Saturday.

Then I started trying to add in longer runs and that's where things went wrong I think. I did an 11 miler which I got away with and then the following week a 9 miler. My right knee started to swell a bit even though it wasn't painful. I cut back my mileage but it got worse incrementally until it was obvious I shouldn't be running on it.

After doing my head in by googling and trying to figure out what it was this time, I bit the bullet and went and saw a physio at Fasic. She says I'm quad dominant and weak in the hips and I have a battery of exercises and stretches to do. She says don't run until you're pain-free and go back to 5K and then only increase your mileage v-e-r-y g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y if at all. It feels good to have a plan and I've had plenty of practice at not being able to run, so I'm just doing what I'm told. I'm walking, swimming, cycling and doing my exercises. It's been 2 weeks since I last ran and it seems longer and it doesn't seem quite as much of a disaster as it did all last year.

So I think I'll tell you the sad story of our mouse. Well there was maybe more than one. We had a wee mouse scooting about the house. Both of us quite like them, you know, as long as there aren't too many or whatever - the odd wee scamper can be fun. Sometimes he would run along the wall when we were watching the telly and give us a chuckle, or sometimes he would belt round the corner from behind the freezer to under the sink when I was in there in the kitchen in my bare feet boiling the kettle. I'd give out a cartoon screech and he would run into his little house a la Jerry. It was all very much slapstick and light-hearted.

I thought I should get a wild-life camera and try out using it on Mr Mousy, so that's what I did. For the first wee while I got no pictures at all, but then after a week or so I did start to get some images and video. Mr Mouse must have just been waiting to see if the camera thing would chase him or not.

But then....

One day I went into the kitchen and there was Mr Mouse lying on his side. Being a coward I called Peter to help and he being hands on touched Mr Mousey who did a gallop on his side, but didn't go anywhere. We figured he wasn't long for this world and Peter put him in a clean paint kettle with a kitchen roll duvet and while we watched the remainder of our telly program, Mr Mouse passed on to the Elysian Fields. We were both saddened, and for a while the flat felt too empty.

Then we were both ridiculously pleased to hear the scitter-scatter of tiny feet again, and we had a few sightings of somebody dark and fast cantering around the kitchen. Order was restored to us and daily hi-jinx of sightings and screaming and scootering began again.

Until...one evening we were watching 19-2 on Netflix; a tense, dark, man drama of French Canadian police; when we saw a small, almost comical form making his way across the carpet towards us. First we were amused but quickly became concerned as we saw this little mouse bumping into things. He seemed to be blind. He kept bowling around, however, like a badly made animatronics mouse.

We searched our poor hearts for what to do. We could kill him but that seemed just too brutal and although he was clearly very sick indeed he didn't seem to be panicking or upset. We knew he likely wouldn't last long and left to his own affairs would probably squeeze behind the bookcase and then make a smell for days. So we corralled him - this time in a comfortable Hoka box, with tissue paper, kitchen roll and an old sock, and we made him a last meal of oatcakes and almond butter and a saucer of water. He liked the almond butter a lot, despite his current state, had a little drink of the water and then sat in it. While we watched the rest of our police drama, he settled down and had a sleep. In the morning he was lying on his side and had joined his friend in the Hereafter.

We assume he (and the first Mr Mousey) was poisoned by our next door neighbours, although there hasn't been an autopsy or an inquest. We're not sure if we'll ever love again.

I'll tell you next blog if we did or not.

Chariots of Fire.

Oops. Not chariots - knees - my knees are on fire. I had optimistically thought I would go out for a run today but that's not to be, so I might as well catch up on some blogging.

After last Sunday's long, extremely slow run, I had gained a bit of confidence about going longer.
All you have to do is just go slow enough!!!

I had a dream in which Bert Logan from Porty, aka "The coach" told me that he liked to smoke a bit of dope around mile 13 when he was running a half marathon. I shrugged this off as being nutty, as dreams are, but then a couple of days later I had a flash on what it meant.

Bert was my inner coach!!! And he was telling me to take it easy, smoke some weed....metaphorically of course....I'm no advocate of smoking drugs. What I mean is the dream was saying "Take a chill pill" - well not literally, I'm no advocate of taking oral medication! It was saying relax. Don't do it. When you want to go to it....NO NO NO NO. Stop that. Phew.

Anyway on Wednesday I took Peter out for a longer run. And the sun came out and things were thawing up a bit and all the wee birds were busy, because their tummies were hungry.
They were mostly too quick for me and my camera.

Red throated angel.

Little Brown Bird #1 "You lookin' at me?"

Mr. Merganser with his bird.

Little brown bird #2. A thrushy robin.

We ran just shy of 14 miles and then I had two whole days off running before I pushed my luck too far.

On Saturday it was to be rain - all day. Michael Geoghegan got into my head a couple of weeks ago at my first Parkrun in over a year. He said that it was good to do a parkrun every fortnight or so. Whether that was true or not, it seemed like a good way of getting running out the way for the day. I had lots of things to do at home. PB was onboard. Onboard the good ship Berlingo. These were the views as we sailed into harbour.

It was raining hard and there was a freezing easterly wind. It all got so cold and terrible that I forgot about taking pictures, so that's your lot. I ran a PW but I was quite pleased with it. I'm pretty sure I actually ran better than I did 2 weeks ago, but the significant headwind on the way out made for slower times. Peter did a PW too.

So on Sunday Peter was heading down to...Berwick??? with Graham Nash to run a 40 miler. I had it in mind that if I could I should do another long run for the coming marathon. On Sunday morning I thought I could, so I took the first train to Musselburgh and ran down the coast with the idea of catching the train home in North Berwick.

It was meant to be a dry day with a bit of early mist - and for a while the mist looked like it might be going to burn off - but then it thickened and deepened for the whole stretch from Musselburgh to Aberlady. At Aberlady there were 11 miles on the clock and I had a proper stop. I haven't been in the Aberlady shop for a few years now. We used to stop there for machine coffee and pastries. To my delight they had cans of San Pellegrino limonata. This is just my favourite drink for long runs. There's something about the sharp lemon that picks you up and stops you feeling sick. They also had a very nice selection of fairly healthy  bars. I had a Trek peanut "protein" bar. (Apparently if you put protein in the name of anything just now, it will sell. Diet fad.) I had a proper seat on the monument just down the road from this and basked in the relative warmth and springiness of this spring day.

I never mentioned how magical it was in the mist. Especially after Seton Sands when I got off road. I could hear the sea but I couldn't see it. I could certainly smell it though! I think the recent storms must have thrown some deep-sea creatures on shore and they were now all rotting away. You used to get the same smell walking past the door of the Lobster Pond in Stromness.

I hadn't spent any time in the magical woods just before Aberlady in a while. Well we were there last week but we'd just come out from our boozy lunch-break and got moving again so we didn't stop to fool around. I wanted to replicate an old picture Peter had taken years ago of me pretending to sleep in a tree. To do this I had to figure out the self-timer on my camera though - and then get in position. 

I thought I'd done quite a good job until I got it home and saw my feet were still kicking about.

(look here's the original)

Everything was looking fairy-tale, so potentially a little weird and creepy. I saw this man (below) coming out of the mist and did wonder if he might be an axe-wielding maniac. He turned out to be nice though. I was taking a picture of some bark as he drew alongside me, and he said "Wonderful colours and texture isn't it?" Then he told me that he had heard the sun was blazing down in Gifford, and went on his way.

By the turn off to Aberlady Nature Reserve I was wondering if I really wanted to run what was likely to be 22 miles. My legs were already a bit shot. But that way is the nicest part of the whole journey and I couldn't really stand the thought of staying on the road. So I headed off into the misty wildness.

I had really wanted to finish the run by going for a paddle in the sea - and I wish I had really, but by then I was sick of running and sick of just about everything but drinking water and sitting down, so I headed straight up to the train station instead.

And then listened to families on the train on the way home.  

Last night my legs were very stiff as I went to bed, but then I woke up in the night and they were on fire. It's the same old stuff around the knees. I tried various things like ice and stretching but in the end I gave in and had paracetamol and ibuprofen, had a good sleep and they've eased off today. No running today or tomorrow and hopefully I can get away with it.