Monthly Archives: May 2012

Training

G3 summit.

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Late 2011 I got talking with Alick, a local dad who I saw swimming in the local lake and running home. He’d done some long endurance stuff – a couple of Iron Man 70.3s and a full Iron – and regularly trained in the Surrey hills around Guildford. We planned to run together the next Sunday morning. For some reason he couldn’t make it, so I went alone and found a route that had mostly roads and some son-of-a-bitch hills. I ended up doing that same run, in Newlands Corner on the North Downs, every Sunday for several weeks, waking up at the crack of dawn or earlier and getting down there, running and then buying pastries on the way back for my family and bewing coffee just as they were just waking up.

That’s really important to me, the family thing. My wife and I work in London during the week so we don’t see each other or the kids except for an hour in the morning and a couple of hours most evenings, so the weekends are special. I never considered before that it would be possible to a) enjoy running, or b) to enjoy it and fit it into a schedule without missing much family time, but with crack of dawn runs both of these were becoming real. Of course that meant no lie-ins, and somewhat earlier nights at weekends which played havoc with my late-night video gaming schedule (!), but running won that little battle. I never thought I’d say that.

After a few weeks of my little route, Alick joined me – and I realised there was a whole new area of Newlands Corner I didn’t know about. Actually, that’s an understatement, I knew very little of this vast piece of rolling Surrey hills. However, tragedy struck soon afterwards: Alick got injured and had to wear an air boot, and I wanted to take a look around this new place – so again every weekend I went down to Newlands on a Sunday and had a snoop around – sometimes running tracks that I knew, but often just running an ad-hoc route, taking my time, finding my way around, sometimes running 15-16 miles and then trying to find my car again. One particularly special morning, the morning when I think it really turned from a pastime to an obsession for me, was in November. Just checked back on Facebook, and on 4th December this is what I recorded:

Started off this run trying to recreate last week’s loop. At about 5K I decided to veer off-course and explore, which meant negotiating my way across a very narrow (like, 4-inch) beam across a river, getting lost in Blair Witch-type woods, …running accidental loops-within-loops, running through a llama farm, almost being shat on by an enthusiastic horse, constant stopping to look for or ask directions, and ploughing through consistently and unendingly boggy fields. And the hills, oh the hills. Slow. But fun! Great fun, funnest running yet. Get well soon, Alick, the trail is waiting next week!

In the absence of a training partner I kept on going with Newlands, each time finding something new or a new trail to follow. On a breakout from my usual area I found St Martha’s hill, at the summit of which is not only St Martha’s church but also, in a darkly comical way, a graveyard – after climbing the long steep hill to reach it I often wondered how many of the occupants were dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.

I kept records of each run via Garmin, sharing them with running friends on Facebook. Then Sarah spotted some races scheduled for early 2012 at Newlands, the G3 Series. Each a different route, between 10K and 12K. I entered all three, in a moment of madness; in January, Feb and March. There were Garmin routes available, so I programmed one into my watch and went running it one day. It became like orienteering – following a map and (electronic) compass to find my way around. The elevation gain on this 10K run was in the region of 240m (~700 feet), which was an eye-opener for a race. But how enjoyable? Very. Lots of fit people, stood near the back, Sarah & kids there to support me and buy me coffee at the end, cold conditions. Over in 69 minutes. Lovely. The second and third runs were equally enjoyable, except that #2 was in -6 degrees, and #3 was in thick snow.

But that’s possibly the most wonderful thing about trail running. With road, the surface is pretty much always the same (except when it’s snowing, admittedly). But with trail, each season, sometimes even each week, is different – the running surface, the views, the air, the soundtrack, the challenge.

Injury, Training

Training: w/e 27th May 2012

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I’m still suffering with a shin complaint, my left leg grumbles a bit particularly after I get up in the morning. Achilles is a bit painful too. I ran a couple of 4-milers, 8:45/min pace, on Monday and Tuesday this week, but then didn’t run as planned Wednesday- instead RICEd it and continued strength exercises. Hoping to run Thursday and Friday, then first open-air swim of the season on Sunday with Alick.

Update: What a difference a few days make. Ran Thursday and Friday, both shortish sessions, came out OK. Felt strong. On Saturday went with Sarah & kids to Queen Elizabeth National Park near Petersfield, and while Sarah recced the route for her HM I pushed Daisy up and down hills while Billy did the ‘space trail’. Tiring stuff. On Sunday morning I ‘swam’ in the local lake, an awful experience – couldn’t breathe properly, got panicky, didn’t enjoy it at all. Went later for an angry run with Alick, did 5 miles at about 8.24 pace, making it just over 20 miles for the week. Also, a breakthrough – tried mid-foot striking, and afterwards (and morning after) no pain in either shin, knee, achilles or anywhere! Woot. Will keep on with this and see where it goes…

Injury, Race

Trying a Tri.

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After the initial success of the 10K run, I thought about longer distances. I’m not really one for half measures, so I immediately wanted to go for a marathon. Which one, and when, and how much training I would need could come later – I was keen to build on the momentum I’d gathered from the 5/10K runs. But then, circumstances changed. One morning I woke up with shoulder pain. I couldn’t raise my hand above shoulder height without excruciating pain. I visited the work physio and he told me it’s because of hypermobility.

I’ve always been hypermobile, although it used to be called double jointedness. A party trick when I was younger was to bend one of my arms back the wrong way, only a little but enough to make others groan. I never thought it to be a problem, until 42 years into my life it was explained that an excess of collagen, and the resulting hypermobility, need to be treated with a certain amount of care. The ball in the shoulder joint normally rotates tightly within its socket, but with my hypermobility it also moves up and down, which literally pinches bits of muscle and whatever other fleshy bits it comes across, and causes this pain. The physio said I’d need to learn to raise my arms differently, walk differently, do press-ups differently, stand differently – pretty much everything would need to change, so that all my joints should behave as they would ‘normally’ (if I wasn’t hypermobile). At the same time I told him about my notion of running a marathon, and his response was that not discouraging, exactly – but that I should consider other complementary activities to help balance out the running. Cycling and swimming, say. Yes, triathlon would be ideal.

So, this being July 2011, I set about finding a triathlon for sometime in 2012. Friends and colleagues of mine heard about it and some said that they did triathlons, something I didn’t know before. I suspect this is a similar phenomenon to the baby aisle in Tesco being invisible to shoppers until they have kids. All these people doing triathlons, until that time unbeknown to me. Two had even completed half-Iron Man events, and one a full Iron Man. So, I had a mountain bike, I could hire a wetsuit, this was for me. I started buying Triathlon magazines, getting into the swing of it all, and kept up my running. Just by thinking about triathlons I felt fitter and more capable. Some weeks later, I decided on a whim to bring the date forward by a few months to November 2011, because I found the Castle Series Triathlons – and the Hever Castle Tri looked like a good family-friendly one to have a crack at.

I trained and trained, doing most of my cycling in the gym along with some bike-to-run transitions. I happened to get talking to one of the mums at my son’s school, who said her husband (who had done an Iron Man) swims at a local open water lake – another thing that until then had passed me by. A lake that you could swim in, 3 miles from my house. (The lady’s husband, Alick, would later become my friend and training partner, and introduce me to the joy of trail running.) I found the idea of swimming in a lake exciting but scary, and turning up to my first swim at 8am on a Sunday morning was a pretty intense experience. I remember having to stop swimming so a family of ducks could swim past, which made me smile. I kept on going there each Sunday for a couple of months until I could swim 400m without stopping. Some effort, I can tell you – I’m not a naturaly swimmer.

Then in November I did the tri. The 400m swim went OK, I started at the very back and managed to overtake a few people; and I saw my wife and kids cheering me on before and after the lake. The 20K bike was great, I’d borrowed a nice carbon Bottechia from one of the PT instructors at my gym, which made me a bit more speedy; and then finally the 5K run – well, my chip time said 22 minutes, which put it in the fastest 5K I’d ever done by some 4 minutes. I always suspected the distance was nearer 4K. Anyway, I got round in 1 hr 35 or so, and knew I could easily improve in a few areas – particularly one of the transitions which was very slow.

I was ready for the next challenge.

Injury

Physio, heal myself.

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I’m injured. Not badly, but enough to keep me from running not just yesterday, but today as well. On Wednesday I continued my recovery plan from last weekend’s half marathon with a few 2 minute bursts, and some nice restful pace in-between. Thursday morning, shin and knee pain on the left leg.

Went to the physio. Great guy! He’s always entertaining and painfully, but comedically, direct. First time I saw him, a year ago, he told me I ‘run like a chicken’. Later, he corrected himself, and instead told me I ‘run like Phoebe from Friends’. Do I pay for this abuse, or is it extra? Doesn’t really matter, as long as his analysis and advice works.

So this time, he had me hopping around the room on each leg successively, before noting that my left knee rolls on on the hop. Diagnosis: weak calves. Homework: calf strengthening exercises. See me again in a week. The hypothesis is that a weak calf will cause the foot to roll in during plyometric exercise (elastic/explosive strength, as with the Achilles tendons during running). Foot rolling in means that other muscles are working harder than normal – notably the two muscles that control the foot roll and the big toe. Both those muscles go all the way up to the knee, and sit very close to the shin bone. It’s those muscles that, when overworked, can give rise to shin splints. So my weak calves are likely causing both my knee and shin pain.

The wonderful thing about this physio is that each time I’ve seen him about some niggly ache or pain, he has had me do some rehab exercises that have demonstrated an almost immediate beneficial effect. This time, hopping around caused pain in my knee. Five minutes of calf raises of varying types, and then hopping again – and no pain. Like a soothsayer, or maybe a horse whisperer – actually more like an engineer, explaining the machine of the body and how the bits link together, and discussing his hypotheses for what could be happening to cause a pain. Wonderful skill.

I’m still going to run this weekend though.

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Thinking about it.

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That’s the best and worst thing about running: thinking. Time to consider, for your mind to wander from idea to idea, flitting between thoughts, plans for the day ahead, happy and sad memories. Anything except the signals of excruciating agony coming from your body.

I’m relatively new to running. I started last year, 2011, because of stars falling into alignment. I was 42 years of age at that time, and although I used to play basketball a bit years ago, I swam for my school a little in early teens and and I like playing 5-a-side, I’ve never been what you’d describe as athletic. I’d tried running dozens of times in my life and generally hated it. Loved the idea, loved it, right up until the point of actually doing it, and then stopping and not starting again.

The first star to align was vanity. I saw a photograph of myself walking with my family, pushing my daughter along in her pushchair, and I didn’t like what I saw – balding and a little paunchy. I didn’t want in the years to come to be fat, bald and old. I knew I couldn’t do anything about hair loss, or ageing, but maybe I could do something about the wodge that had comfortably settled around my midriff. The second star was jealousy. A friend of mine, an old colleague who I don’t see often enough, had just successfully run the Brighton Marathon. This interested me from the point of view of… well, couldn’t I do that? I like a challenge. I had no idea how to go about it. The third star was technology. Another running friend advised me that to run a marathon I’d have to learn to pace myself, to not run above 10-minute miles at first. I love gadgets, and I suddenly had an excuse to get a GPS running watch. That was a revelation.

In May 2011 I set myself up with a little 5km route around Weybridge, Surrey, and ran out at as near to 10min/miles as I could. And blow me, if I didn’t finish it. It was the furthest I’d ever run for fun (previous charity races aside, as they weren’t, honestly, fun). I went again a few days later, and again, and I found a thrill in trying to beat my previous time. Then one day, some weeks later, I finished the loop, and on a spur of the moment decided I’d go around again. Without stopping, I did a 10k run. For fun. I didn’t realise at the time, but this was something that would quickly go on to become a passion for running now, just over a year later. Not only a passion to run, but a drive to go a little faster, and a *lot* further.