It didn’t go to plan. 7 miles in I couldn’t cope anymore. I’m not sure with what or why but I just couldn’t. The pain wasn’t really any worse than it had been all morning. It was there as a constant but not worse. The terrain was much more challenging but I knew it was going to be hard. I was ok for a little while and then confidence on any ascent and descent vanished- tricky when most of the route is up or down. Eventually brain and body said ‘nope, not today’. There were another 2 miles to navigate before a way off. We agreed Kath would carry on and I would head to the Sill and figure things out from there. So at 9 miles we split and I walked slowly down the road.
Anyway, I’m disappointed and cross and sad and sore and need time to process. I found some joy in the day, a lovely scenic bus ride, people who helped, a room with a bath…
Just a very quick post because I’m tired and need to process today. We left Howard Lodge in Carlisle just after 8 am after an average breakfast but nice overall stay.
Today’s route was varied, more undulating than yesterday and actually a lovely route.
There were some muddy bits and some of the road sections were actually welcome after having spent a chunk of time thinking carefully about where to put our feet.
We had the path completely to ourselves for the first 5.5 miles and after that we met others coming in the opposite direction every couple of miles or so.
My feet are sore. The walking shoes were still soaking wet so I obviously wore the trail running shoes. They’re actually much better and fabulous in mud but they are quite tight. Those pressure points already tender got worse and I was in low level pain from early on. facilities are basically non existent so eventually we had a wild wee.
The sunshine was lovely and it was nice not to be rained on! But I started flagging quite early. We decided to push on to 10 miles before lunch. I sort of made it but I was struggling. We sat by the roadside and had some pasta we’d bought from M&S. I struggled to get going again and in Walton we thought we’d stop at the tea room for coffee. We didn’t have coffee because we couldn’t get served as the guy running it seemed more interested in chatting to locals. He seemed cross that we left with me just having had a pee but in all the time it took he hadn’t taken an order from Kath.
We saw the first bits of stone wall today. It’s quite a staggering wall and must have been tea imposing in its time.
Around 14 ish miles I lost the plot. Everything seems to hurt worse. There was a narrow muddy section that just made feet and hips throb with every step. I had a little cry. I got in my head. It definitely felt like I had taken on too much. I was cross that I didn’t feel better. After all we were just walking and not walking fast and the terrain was mostly fine and while there had been a hill or two it really wasn’t a strenuous route.
So today has been tough. Dacre House, our B&B is really nice and I am happy to just be able to rest. My feet are really tender, my little toes are blistered to hell and let’s just not talk about the chafing along the knicker line – let’s just say I screamed in the shower and Kath’s response to seeing it was ‘fucking hell that’s horrendous’. Vaseline has been liberally applied, the toe blisters popped and I’m about to do some stretches and then sleep.
Tomorrow is another long day. It has much more up in it and is described as moderate to strenuous. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. But I want to.
We are tucked up in our Bed and Breakfast in Carlisle after a good day getting wet through walking in the rain. Our adventure started yesterday with a train journey from Keighley to Carlisle. This includes the Settle to Carlisle line which is a stunning route. From Carlisle we got a taxi out to our B&B – basically the route we’d be walking back today.
I’ll review the accommodation separately on Trip Advisor but Bowness House Farm, now Hunters Leisure complex or something like that was fine. Not luxury and with interesting decor (diamanté encrusted toilet roll holder anyone?) and average food but fine. After a little stretch of legs on the beach we ate and then settled in.
This morning the earliest we could have breakfast was 8am so that’s what we did. Then we left our bags ready to be picked up and transported on to the next B&B and off we went. We’d spoken to a guy at breakfast who had just finished the walk the other way had described our Day 1 as boring. it was anything but!
After the obligatory start selfie and stamp in our Hadrian’s Wall passports we made our way out of the village and along the road for a bit. The Solway Firth is quite spectacular really and we paused every now and again to listen to curlews and oyster catchers. We soon picked up the off road path for a bit before making our way past a Holiday park and along a lane. A little stretch along and we stopped to put our rain jackets on. And we didn’t take them off again all day.
A brief nod to Drumburgh Castle and we were on the Burgh Marshes. That’s a roughly 3 mile stretch which we walked part on the road and part up on the grassy mound. We could still hear and see curlews and lapwings. Once we crossed the cattle grid at the end of the marshes, we were heading into Burgh-by-Sands. Our taxi driver had told us that the Pub there was pretty much the only thing open for refreshments along the route and that it opened at 12. It was only 11.30 so no coffee and pee stop. It was raining quite heavily and as we continued on I got completely drenched by a car driving through a puddle. I lost my sense of humour for a few minutes and am marched on with soggy knickers.
We had been leapfrogging a woman walking on her own and she stopped at a portaloo by the village green and we decided to do the same. Feeling more comfortable we continued on with a brief stop to look at St Michael’s church. After that we walked along a few fields navigating the cows and sheep. We arrived in Beaumont with St Mary’s church sitting sort of above us on the hill and a welcome look bench round a tree inviting us to pause for a bite to eat. In addition there was a coffee trailer.
We had our packed lunch and coffee, briefly chatted to two women also walking the wall and then set off again. More fields, more cows and lots more kissing gates as we made our way alongside the river Eden into Carlisle. We walked all the way round the Sands Centre to find the entrance so we could stamp our passports. We saw the two women there again after having leapfrogged each other a couple of times. We realised we didn’t actually have to go all the way round and used a back exit to get us back on the path.
Technically the route for today was complete just before the Sands Centre but we decided to add a bit of tomorrow’s route on as we would need to walk to the B&B anyway and continuing on the path was really only marginally further. I jumped straight into the shower to get the worst of the mud off legs (I’d been wearing 3/4 length pants) and we rested a little before going for food in town. We went to Franco’s. Good pasta and pizza and the best espresso I’ve hard in a while!
So that’s what we did. About 17 miles all in. But how did I feel. My shoes aren’t quite right. They are quite hard/stiff and then they got wet. So my feet felt quite tender from quite early on. I’m considering my trail running shoes for tomorrow but they are quite tight so not sure yet. I got in my head every now and again. Early on I had a panic about whether I could do this and there were bits where I was anxious – some stone flag steps, fields full of cows, significant mud… but I’m fine. I’m tired because I’m not fit and my feet are a bit sore but it’s all good and tomorrow looks like it might be drier – which would be lovely!
I did not want to run today. I turned the alarm off at 6am, turned over and dozed for a bit. I felt creaky and didn’t really want to get up. I did still get up before 7am but it was a ‘sip coffee on the patio’ sort of morning. I had vague ideas about running at lunch time after some work calls in the morning but then I got busy and hungry. No excuses this evening. I just didn’t want to. I got as far as wandering into the bathroom to put a bath on before pausing. I want to get round the Great North Run and I want to do Dopey without being completely miserable. The time to put in the work for that is now. Not tomorrow, not next week or month, now. So I got changed. Still didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go any of the routes from home, I definitely didn’t want to drive anywhere to run. I didn’t want to leave the house and be out for 45 minutes, I didn’t want to get sweaty. I just didn’t want to.
Kath was on the bike so I couldn’t make an excuse and cycle instead. Although the Dopey plan has two 45 minute runs during the week, I decided to sod it and just go a short loop and at least just get out (still didn’t want to). I pulled my shoes on and went outside. At least it wasn’t as hot as it has been. As I set off I suddenly wondered if I could run a mile without walking. I almost never run continuously and have mostly been running 30 seconds run and 30 second walk intervals. I upped the running interval on my 45 minute run on Wednesday but I can’t remember when I last ran continuously for several minutes, never mind a mile. Well, I thought, I could just try and run a mile and then come home. That seemed like a good thing to do. Given my mind was playing tricks and being annoying, giving it something to actually battle would be good training for one things actually get physically hard. So off I went. I ran a mile. There wasn’t really a mental battle. I just ran. A lot of it is downhill. It was all fine. Then there is a slight slope. It’s not much but really but it’s noticeable when you are running and I have struggled with it. It was hard and I was huffing and puffing and briefly thought about sneaking in a walk break but then it was over and I was back on the flat and then downhill. So now we know I can run a mile.
I walked back trying to keep a reasonable pace walking but not marching flat out. I was out a total of 30 minutes – just over 12 of them running. I am happy with that. In fact, I am happy with the week. I did nothing much on Monday. It was mum’s birthday and we went out for food in the evening. Tuesday I re-did my FTP test on the bike. Now that I found ridiculously hard. I am not a cyclist. I can’t get myself into the same mental place on a bike as I can running – I can’t do hard on the bike. I give up much more quickly mentally. Maybe it’s just what I am used to and it will come. I do think the new FTP is a better reflection of reality and the workout I did yesterday suggests the level is now more accurate. So I have done 2 runs and 2 rides this week so far. I have also now done 11 consecutive days of daily stretches with today’s still to come. I am not overly tired and nothing hurts. In fact I probably have slightly more energy and am sleeping better. Exercise, whether run or bike, is also becoming more just what I do rather than something that I have to force myself to do every single time. I know I didn’t want to go today – but I did. Just a couple of weeks ago I would have run that bath and then watched Olympics in bed.
Consistency is everything in running (and it seems in cycling too) so I am very happy with this week. I am having another go at a long run tomorrow and will see how I got with the 45 second running intervals over the longer distance (they were fine on the shorter run on Wednesday).
Since returning from Ambleside a couple of weeks ago, I am finally making progress. I have done the first 2 weeks, that’s 4 rides, of the very basic training programme in Zwift. I have actually enjoyed it but it’s clear that doing the ramp test while still recovering from COVID was a mistake. I need to re-do it as it’s making the sessions that rely on that measure too easy.
I restarted yoga but really only managed the morning floor flow on and off. I have done 6 days of daily stretches from the Dynamic Runner app though and I do really like those. Just around 16-17 minutes a day and targeting all the areas that get tight with running.
Ah yes running – that’s why I’m doing all this, so I can run. It’s only 6 weeks to the Great North Run and we know I’d barely been out before I was poorly. I’d had a go at the first couple of short runs for Dopey week 1, then nothing for what would have been week 2. Week 3 it was Thursday before I made it out and it was a tough one. I felt like giving up after a mile but slogged it out another 1.66 miles to meet Kath at the hairdressers for a lift back up the hill. It was hot though. My pink laces seemed ridiculously bright in the unusually hot West Yorkshire sun.
This week is week 4. Monday I spent all day putting off going out and in the end I just walked. It was such a mental battle to get out though that even that felt like a huge win. Thursday I got out for a 3 mile no drama plod but I was getting worried about distance. It really felt like 3 miles was about as far as my body was prepared to go.
So today was a bit of a test. I needed to do a long run that was actually longer than 3 miles. We have a loop we call the farm loop which is roughly 7. It needs modifying a little at the moment because we have one canal bridge out so can’t loop home across it. I had absolutely no clue how this would go.
Well, it went surprisingly well. Let’s park any discussion about pace. I’m coming to terms with the idea that I just am a couple of minutes a mile slower than I used to be. So I set off using 30/30 run/walk intervals. I tried to go deliberately slow. Absolutely zero effort spent on pace. I really wanted to get past 2 miles without finding it hard. That worked. The 2 mile beep actually made me jump. All was good. Mile 3 was also fine. Just plodding along. I passed a few runners with race numbers on – I presume doing the It’s Grim Up North Sir Titus Trot. Mile 4 was a bit annoying as I dropped off the canal, through the farm that gives the loop its name and along narrow roads where I kept having to stand in to let cars pass. Still, running wise no drama.
Just into mile 5 I added an additional walk interval as I went up the slope back to the canal. I came out behind a couple of runners I’d seen in the distance earlier and they were walking with a few runs thrown in. I was walking slower than them but running faster than they were walking so over the next mile I slowly caught them up. I went past and then they immediately passed me again as they set off on a run. Their running was faster than mine and I stayed a fairly constant distance behind them for the rest of my run. they surged ahead when running, I caught up when they weren’t.
Mile 5 was fine. Mile 6 was fine but I was grateful for the distraction of two herons one of which led me to add a second additional walk interval so I could have a little chat with it. As I approached the final mile I began to try and work out where I would finish and really hoped it would not be too far beyond one of the canal bridges that we call the post office bridge. Running past that seemed like it would be tough because that was the obvious point at which to stop and walk home.
7 miles took me almost exactly to that bridge. 7 miles. No drama. Slow but within Disney pace. On reflection I probably could have done with some fuel for the last couple of miles (I only took water) but otherwise it was a good solid run.
The. I walked home very slowly up the hill. I stopped frequently to sip my water and stretch out the various bits of my body that were now cross with me. After food and a bath I’ve been doing very little- mostly watching random sport at the Olympic Games. I’ve stretched and nothing hurts. Happy.
really (not) a runner 