Category: Training

The thing about pace and the thing about fitness

Jess Guth4 Comments

As I am continuing to find the running quite tough mentally and I really can’t shake off that nagging doubt about being able to do it or the feeling that people are probably just laughing at me I was looking for a little confidence boost, a sign, something that would encourage me to keep going. I found a couple

1. Pace. No, I haven’t suddenly found pace but I finally looked at our runs on the computer after Kath had downloaded them all from her watch. In some of the posts I’ve told you the average pace and the fastest has been 12.something mintues per mile. So, slow. In my mind I had associated that with me obviously running really really slowly, as I would, because I’m really not a runner. However what I hadn’t thought about is that of course we are walking quite a lot. In fact that pace relates to the intervals where we are walking 30 seconds in every 2 mintues. Looking at the fastest pace and tracking the pace throughout the runs tells a slightly different story. I am not actually running at snails’ pace. Our running pace is often around 8.5 minutes per mile. That’s not fast but that is respectable at least! What that means is that as we increase the time we run (and keep the running pace as it is now) as part of these intervals, our minutes per mile time is actually likely to come down to really quite respectable times – well, respectable for someone who couldn’t run the 50metres or so to the post box at the end of the road at the beginning of the year.

2. Fitness is a funny thing. If you don’t constantly attend to it somehow it just disappears. I know this because I have got myself reasonably fit about twice in my life and then lost it pretty much overnight. The other way around is totally different. Improvements in fitness levels seem to just creep up on you. I’ve noticed little things. Our usual 30 minute route finishes along the canal and we then have to walk back up the hill to get home – I’m no longer stopping to ‘admire the view’ half way up; I am happier about walking up the hill on may home from work; I am recovering from our runs much more quickly… It’s the little things that I probably wouldn’t even notice if I wasn’t blogging about our running efforts and everything associated with that.

So, in the middle of all the struggling to get my head around the running stuff there are some positives to hang on to.

Bank Holiday Weekend Running

Jess Guth1 Comment

We’ve done a fair bit of running over the bank holiday weekend. We did 4.25 miles on Saturday and 30 minutes on Sunday and for good measure another 30 minutes this morning. As I mentioned a few days ago I struggled on the last 30 minute run before the weekend.I was therefore absolutely dreading the 4.25 miles. I had lined up every excuse I could think of but then decided that it was just as well to get it over with. It won’t do to be scared of 4.25 miles when I’ll have to do a marathon in 7 month’s time.

We are still running on the flat along the canal rather than risking setting my calf off with hills. So, with the watch set for 30 repetitions of intervals of our 90 second running/30 seconds walking we set off. I hated it. Kath tells me there was lots to see. Lots of ducklings, a few goslings and a heron. I didn’t really take any of them in. I just wheezed my way along. We turned round at 2.12 miles and turning round and heading back gave me a bit of a boost. I think my posture improved and I felt like I just might be able to make it. More wheezing along. With a mile to go my lower legs felt really tight, tight but not painful or twingy – so onwards. We started a running interval again just as we hit the 4 mile mark and I felt ok, in fact I felt pretty strong so I decided that we should try and run to the end – the end I knew would be pretty much bang on at the next bridge. Complete focus on the bridge pulled me towards the end and then suddenly we were there, done. 4.25 miles. Just over 56 minutes with an average pace of 13.13minute per mile.

We had decided to see how our legs felt before making a decision on a Sunday run. When I first got up my legs felt a little weary and we wanted to go out anyway so we thought we’d see how we felt later. We went late afternoon, 30 minutes along the canal in the opposite direction to Saturday. It felt awful. It felt worse than the run I complained about last week. It wasn’t so much my legs, I was struggling for air and it just felt like such as huge huge effort. After turning round at 15.5 minutes I was hoping for that boost. It didn’t come. I was just about  to give up when I heard a lamb at the farm to our right bleat really loudly. It made me jump and laugh and suddenly stopping wasn’t an option anymore. In fact, we missed the last walk and just ran the last 4 minutes straight off. Our pace was close to pre-injury best. 2.35 miles, pace of 12.47. I should have been thrilled, I was just shattered.

Monday – as we continue the madness, we have stepped up the running time.  We’re still following the principles set out by Jeff Galloway  as part of the RunDisney training but we are adjusting the intervals/run/walk ratios as we feel comfortable. We will now do 12 repetitions of 2 minutes running and 30 seconds walking for our 30 minute runs and however many repetition it takes for us to cover the required distance on the distance runs. This morning’s run was a funny one. We went out slowly and really, running for 2 minutes didn’t feel much worse or longer than running for 90 seconds and 30 seconds walking is fine. I didn’t hate the running, I remember ducklings, but it felt like really really hard work. We plodded our way to 2.27 miles with a slow pace of 13.13 minutes per mile but I now know what that run/walk ratio feels like and I’m ok with that.

As a little reminder why I am putting my self through this – we’ll be starting our fundraising in earnest soon – we’re raising money for a charity called Panthera. They do amazing conservation work. Have a look at their website and if you can support us it will help us keep going and it will ensure Panthera can keep doing the brilliant work they do. You can donate via our Justgiving site.

Strengthening the Calf Muscles

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We ran 4.25 miles today. Just had to get that in eventhough this post isn’t about that!

My injury was due to my calf muscles, or more accurately, my right calf muscle being too weak. Actually  it still is too weak. My osteopath recommended a very very simple exercise for which you need no equipment and very little time: Heel raises. So while my calf muscle was still recovering he recommended doing heel raises using both legs at the same time – so basically standing with your feet evenly placed and raising yourself up until standing on your tiptoes and then lowering yourself back down in a controlled way (you can hold onto something for balance). Now though I am supposed to do this standing on one leg – apparently people should be able to do about 20 one leg controlled heel raises generally and runners should aim to be able to do 30. I am currently aiming for 5 without falling over.

The heel raise exercise does get slightly obsessive. I did 20 while in the supermarket queue and I keep doing it when standing in corridors, offices, at the roadside etc talking to people – usually both legs at the same time though. It’s so easy and yet so effective. There are loads of clips on YouTube showing how to do them but the osteopath recommended just doing them on a flat surface/floor and not on the edge of a step as many seem to suggest. He did recommend standing on the edge of a step and pushing your heel down for stretching the calf muscle but I think those two exercises should be seperate so as not to risk injury – I might be wrong there of course but doing them seperately works for me.

Next on the list is to make time for yoga using a yoga app I recently downloaded. It has several 15 minute programmes at different levels. I’ll let you know once I finally get round to building those into a routine properly!

Back on the Road #2

Jess Guth4 Comments

So my last blog about running was on the 9th May when I was trying not to be grumpy about the injury to my calf muscle. I missed the appointment with the Osteopath and had to re-book for yesterday. I didn’t run at all from 3rd May to the 17th May. I was just a little scared of getting back on the road again. I spent Thursday- Saturday in London for work last week and when I got back Saturday evening I was actually looking forward to getting out. I was nervous about my calf though. It was still a little tight and the osteopath had said he wanted to see me again before advising on when I could run again. Yeah ok so I am rubbish at doing as I am told. So here’s what we’ve done since the 17th, all on the flat along the canal as per osteopath instructions and all using intervals of 90 seconds running and 30 seconds walking.

17th May – 30 minutes, 2.2 miles

It actually felt good to be out and the running felt doable

18th May – 30 minutes, 2.22 miles

Felt a bit sluggish but got stronger towards the end. Enjoyed it once it was over!

20th May – 30 minutes, 2.3 miles

We spent the day at the RSPB reserve at Bempton Cliffs so had done a lot of walking during the day and then went for a run afterwards. I thought we would be quite slow because of that and because the first two runs made my lungs feel like they were on fire. There was another running interval around 20 minutes that felt really hard but we managed a really strong positive finish. Happy with that!

21st May  – 30 minutes, 2.28 miles

I saw the Osteopath in the morning. He examined my leg again and said it felt much better. After a bit of treatment he advised that running was fine but to take it easy and not to push myself on speed or distance for roughly 6 weeks. So, I am allowed to run but the strengthening exercises he has shown me are going to be key to avoiding repetition of the injury. (More on them another time). So, running it was then – after work feeling tired and generally a bit grumpy. From the first beep of the watch every little bit of me was screaming ‘Nooooo…. just no’. My legs felt heavy and my lungs were burning. I was huffing and puffing after the first 90 seconds of running. Somehow, and I am really not quite sure how, I made it through 8 of the 15 repetitions; we turned round. Usually I quite like heading back along the canal – it means at least half is done but this time it just didn’t seem possible to run back to pretty much where we started. Mind over matter… another running interval done… 10 intervals done and that stupid little nagging voice would not shut up: “I’m not a runner, I can’t do this, this is stupid, I’m NOT a runner’. And walk… 11 out of 15 runs done, breathe. No really breathe. I pretty much dragged myself through the next 2 runs with Kath’s constant and brilliant encouragement (I hope we never get to the point where she finds the runs so hard she doesn’t have enough left to talk me through the tough moments!). What I was doing can’t really be described as running, it was more plodding, plodding very slowly. Then the worst was over and when the watch beeped after run 14 I felt strangely competitive so I kept going and we ran the last 4 minutes. Hated it. Properly hated it. Just like old times. But it did feel good to have done it

Trying not to be grumpy

Jess Guth3 Comments

I’ve been quiet for a week or so. There’s a reason for that. I haven’t been running. After getting back on the road after the tweak to my calf muscle I was feeling quite good about the whole running thing. Then 5 days ago I was rounding up our friend’s sheep and re-tweaked the calf muscle. It was so frustrating. She sheep were being awkward sods so to cut them off and try and get them to go through the gate they were supposed to go through I needed to move quickly up hill – I pushed off my right leg, it’s been sore since.

Two days ago I went to see an osteopath. Kath has been seeing one for ages because of her dodgy back and I went to see the same one last year with a hip problem and she was fantastic. I couldn’t get an appointment with her quickly but there was someone in the same practice who could see me (Farfield House Clinic in Keighley).

I don’t like going for any kind of medical appointment. Maybe that’s a lifetime of being told by medical practitioners that I could do with losing a bit of weight (no shit! Really? I hadn’t noticed I was a bit on the porky side) so I was a little apprehensive going. I thought that the osteopath might just tell me that running really wasn’t a good idea for someone as heavy as me and that the injury was inevitable given my weight etc. I needn’t have worried. He sat me down, listened to the running story so far, had a look at my legs, checked a few things by asking me to stretch and move in particular ways and then we had a chat about what the most likely cause of the pain was: strained calf muscle. A typical but not serious running injury. Not serious as long as it is left to heal properly now – otherwise they quickly become recurring which he said was just boring. He has a point. So, after a bit of message-type work on my hamstring and calf muscle, he showed me two stretching exercises – one for calves and one for hamstrings and a strengthening exercise for calf muscles. So if you see me stopping on any steps and pushing my heel down or standing around randomly raising myself onto my toes, don’t be alarmed. I am no more mad than usual.

I am going back to see him on Tuesday at which point he will tell me when I can run again. He seemed to understand my impatience and frustration and he seemed genuinely interested in getting me back to running as soon as possible without risking further injuriy. It was certainly  a lot better than going to my doctor and coming away with a pack of neurofen and ‘don’t run for a week’ sort of advice.