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Pumpkin Trails

Jess GuthLeave a comment

Darling Mortals, come with me, if you dare, as I take you on the Halloween adventure that is the Bolton Abbey Pumpkin trail. Once through these gates, there’s no turning back, you are bound to complete the harrowing mile by my side, see the frightening sights and hear the horrible sounds. And should you make it to the end, well then you get to do it all again – but in reverse and worse because I’ll be a mile more tired, a mile more sweaty and a mile more huffy and puffy. So. Enter. If you are brave enough.

Selfie of my head and shoulders in front to ominous looking Halloween themed gates leading up a woodland path

Our journey begins up a frightful slope. It’s victims rest, in peace or otherwise, at the bottom. Or maybe it was the toadstools that finished them off or possibly the potions further up. I beckon Bramble to come join me on my run. Afterall, every witch needs her sidekick and there is not black cat to be seen. Bramble however doesn’t seem keen to leave her grave and as my pathetic untrained human lungs struggle to do their job up the slope, I begin to see why. The potions cabinet, while well placed for foolish mortals exerting themselves, offers nothing of use. No oxygen, nothing that suggests a sugary gel. If it’s something to slow down a rival you’re looking for though, it might be worth a longer stop. I have only just started so lingering is out of the question, though much desired . Maybe when I return, I can sit with Bramble for a while.

Onwards my travellers, we must fly. Well, actually that would be cheating. So we park the broomstick here. The downhill was fun while it lasted, it felt a bit like flying, just slower and more, well, grounded. I wondered where I’d put my hat. I am that age now where finding things in weird places is normal. But its too big and cumbersome for running and it might fall over my eyes. I shall leave it there and summon it later. And Alas, this trail teases with modes of transport. But no wings for me today. I vowed to make it through under my own steam. Yes, hm, steam. Is that what is burning in my lungs? And are we sure flying would be cheating? Seems unnecessary for my legs to have to work this hard when we could just… no. Onwards.

We must leave temptation behind and make our way deep deep into the forest. There is no chance now of anything lurking not hearing me coming. I haven’t run for weeks and before that only sporadically. I sound like a steam train with a bad cough and I am less efficient. Loud and slow in these woods? Not safe, not safe at all. And before you know it, out comes Henry (this year, as far as I can tell, all spiders are called Henry. There’s one on our kitchen ceiling, he’s Henry, too). Henry, with his unreasonable number of legs and menacing look. Is that a scream I hear? Oh, yes, ok, that was me. And I run a little faster. Perhaps a little too much faster because the next stops presents an attractive looking resting place and I contemplate a nap. A long long long long nap.

Or maybe what we need is lunch, looks frightfully delicious. Doesn’t smell so good though. Or is that me again. No time to work it out because I run past a some parrots pretending to be pirates or maybe there are some pirates somewhere that own the parrots and they are nearby somewhere left to our imagination – but anyway, that display may be the scariest of them all because it’s weird so I run past without stopping or taking a photo. I also skip past the dancing skeletons because I do not want to dance with a skeleton. Or dance at all really, I have enough of a job on remembering how to put one foot in front of the other. But then I have run too far and my lungs, if indeed I still have any, are protesting. I stop at the bone jokes, they’re so terrible they humerus. (Sorry).

And when I can breathe again we move on to a squished scarecrow and crows and a Halloween looking archway. Did our trail designers run out of scary things? We have made it mortal friends. We got to the end of the mile. Just over a mile in fact, though barely. The scariest thing about the mile was undoubtedly the pace. It was frightfully slow, held back and distracted as I was by the trail’s demons and spirits. Oh hang on, that was just the voices in my head reminding me not to get too carried away and that a mile stop-start running while looking at displays and making up stories in your head doesn’t make you a runner.

It’s time to head back but now I am in my head. It is time to head somewhere anyway. Back? I am in my head so that turns to backwards and negative and no point and I need something else. Just because I am now doing the trail in reverse doesn’t mean I am going backwards. It doesn’t mean retreat or going back to where I started. Because that was then and when I get back it will be now. Or then. Or something. I can’t do time, it confuses me. But this wasn’t about time, it was about being in my head about not being a runner.

As I look at my options for a destination on the last display, I realise that maybe stop-start running while looking at displays and making up stories is exactly what makes me a runner. I mean if you’re not a runner it is a pretty stupid thing to do. So here’s my story of a little witch who, one Saturday morning decided enough was enough and it was time to get her sizable arse out for a run. She went somewhere where she thought she might blend in and had a good chuckle at what the humans entertained themselves and their young ones with for Halloween. The broom and the wings were impressive, she had to admit. She lingered at the broom. So big, probably fast, perhaps a little clunky in the air and not really sparkly enough.

The rest was a little gimmicky, though the eyeball soup looked yummy. She nearly stopped for some but it was positioned too close to the spiders, who seemed nice but spiders are so needy, always talking and scuttling about. Henry this and Henry that.

The running was hard going. It had been too long – what a good 300 years maybe? Bones were creaky, joints all seized up and the little witch was not at all convinced that a witch should ever feel her lungs like that. But she got to the end of the trail having captured each stop (but one, pirates and parrots for Halloween?!?) and was pleased with herself. She took in the view, not a bad place for a little rest, and then she made her way back. One foot in front of the other, running for at least a minute each time, some runs were much longer, some just felt like it but all of the running was strong and felt capable and the little witch smiled, because this, she thought, is what it feels like, when your body is on its way to being able to do things. It can do hard things and then those hard things get easier. So the little witch ran all the way back to the car park, got changed and went home happy. Maybe she drove, but maybe she flew. And maybe I am a runner or maybe I cheated and flew.

Bitchy Calf Muscles and the Virtual Berlin Wall Challenge

Jess GuthLeave a comment

I had to rethink my Berlin Wall Challenge. Hmph. Silly calf muscle. I think it is probably getting better now but it was pretty painful for a good few days. I tried to go for a walk a couple of times but going up even the slights slope hurt. Cycling was pain free but I didn’t want to cycle, I wanted to run. But anyway, I want to complete the challenge this month because I have other plans for June!

I have counted walking and biking – not that this has got me all that far – I still have about 30km to go over the next week. But anyway, where am I? Well I think last time I had just gone past the piece of the Wall outside the Museum Treptow. I called it the first piece I passed but actually I missed a whole stretch that runs along side the lovely A113. You can see where exactly and also some good pictures on the Mauerspuren website here. Eventually the challenge route left the A113 and I must have magically jumped from the motorway across to a footpath along a canal the name of which I looked up and have forgotten again. Then, not long after that I turned right along another bit of canal. About halfway along the stretch I did along that canal, I will have passed the monument to the last victim of the Wall Chris Gueffroy. He was shot dead on the 5th February 1989 trying to cross into West Berlin. Just think about that for a second. 1989.

A little after that I will have crossed the canal and headed left. Mauerspuren tells me there are more bits of Wall to be seen and as I make my way through this residential (I think) area, there are also concrete posts to which barbed wire will have been attached. If I ventured off the main route a little I would be able to see another bit of Wall that is outside the townhall in Treptow. A little further along you can see a series of stone slabs marking the border as well as the street lighting that would have illuminated the border zone. After more bits of Wall I will have turned left and then right to find myself on Harzer Strasse, which is where I currently am with this view.

From the challenge itself you wouldn’t know about the bits of wall or other left overs from the physical border. You wouldn’t know about the monument along the canal. In fact, so far I have had one ‘postcard’ which tells me Berlin is a thriving City of 3.8 million people and gives a very superficial account of Germany being divided into East and West after World War 2. In fact you’d get a sense of the Wall and the Death strip that was nomansland as something vaguely Hollywood. The postcard talks of daring escapes. I’m not keen on the positioning and writing in this. It feels glamourised and the point sort of missed.

I also unlocked a ‘Local Spot’ which tells me that Kreuzberg has transformed itself from a cheap (read undesirable) neighbourhood in the shadow of the Berlin Wall into one of the trendiest places in Berlin. That might be true and I really don’t know enough about the different Berlin districts. It seems to miss the point of Kreuzberg as somewhere that has always had a reputation for difference, migration, art, punk and while some of the arty reputation appears to remain I wonder how gentrified it has become. Maybe one to look at when we next go to Berlin. I read somewhere (may have been Wikipedia when I was first looking for more information) that it now has the youngest population of any of the districts. I do know that the Jewish Museum is on Kreuzberg and that it is an area with a relatively high concentration of Stolpersteine – 10cm square cobble stones topped with brass plates which commemorate victims of the Nazi regime and are placed outside the last residence or workplace of the person the memorial is for.

Obviously I am going to finish the challenge but I am wondering whether real place challenges are for me. I am irritated by the lack of any real historical markers or detail on this route. And just as I found the jumps between locations discombobulating on the Cuba challenge, I am not quite sure why we are only doing 48km for this one. It suited me for the time period I wanted (even though things have now changed because of the calf niggle) but the Berlin Wall was 155km. I suppose not everyone wants to do that distance but it seems to me that it wouldn’t be too hard to highlight a section of about the length of the challenge I am doing and be explicit about the fact that it is a section and have some rationale as to why that section has been chosen. I don’t know – might just be me and my grumpy old woman ways and maybe it just really doesn’t matter, it’s just a running/walking challenge – but I am concerned about a whole load of people now thinking the Wall was 48km long and generally having a skewed view of Berlin history (newsflash, 48km wouldn’t make a big area if you had to wall all the way round it and if you just have a line, people can go round it!).

Anyway, I have also done other stuff – yesterday I did an absolutely disastrous FTP test on the bike. Functioning Threshold Pace or whatever FTP stands for. As soon as it good a little hard, I got in my head and panicked about my calf and then it all fell apart. I’ll try again next week. Today I went to the gym early and it was all good. I put some weights up even though I haven’t been for a little bit and it felt like a productive session. I halved the weight on calf raises and that was ok and the only thing I couldn’t do was the leg curl because the bar sat right on my bruised shin. I’d forgotten about that bruise until I tried that and swore. I might bike later, I might not. It’s hot. I am only blogging now because it’s something to do indoors to cool down.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday.

FFS

Jess GuthLeave a comment

That’s really all I have to say. I felt good about week 2 of the plan. I felt good about having bought the next virtual challenge (Berlin Wall) and was ready to start. I had done run one. It was all looking, well, good. And then on Thursday when I was going to do run 2 in the afternoon, I whacked my right shin and top of my foot on the edge of a raised bed trying to water some just planted mange tout. Yes gardening is dangerous. It really hurt. It sort of derailed my afternoon in the way small things that are not really a big deal at all sometimes can. I didn’t run. I told myself it didn’t matter because I could still get my two runs in easily by running Friday and Sunday. Friday came and we set off to Bolton Abbey. The beauty of a week off is that we can run in places that are often busy at the weekends during the week and avoid crowds. I set off with a 5 minute walk. Everything felt ok, no niggles. I then went into my run/walk intervals. Everything still felt ok. I wasn’t really settling into my breathing so it felt a little more laboured than it really needed to be but nothing at all to cause concern. At about 0.7 miles I felt my left calf go a little tight. It was right at the end of a running interval and it disappeared through the walk break so I didn’t think anything of it. I started the next run interval, ran for about 15 seconds and then swore loudly as my left calf screamed at me. I hopped dramatically on my right leg for a couple of hops, swore some more and then tentatively put my left foot down. I shifted my weight onto it, that seemed fine. But walking – nope. I hobbled back to the car, stopping along the way to take pictures and try not to be too grumpy. So much for running consistently and so much for my virtual Berlin Wall Challenge.

I iced and heated the calf muscle and felt sorry for myself for the rest of Friday. Saturday I worked an Applicant Visit Day and after setting up the classroom and courtroom was in quite a lot of pain in spite of painkillers. In the afternoon, we watched football and then sorted some photos and by the time I went to bed it perhaps didn’t feel quite so sore. I woke up this morning and there was no pain as I sat up and did a little body scan. I got up. I could feel some tightness but no pain. I can walk normally without pain. There is tightness and if I step backwards or at a funny angle there is a bit of pain but nothing like yesterday. I am obviously not going to risk running just yet but I did just sit on the bike and pedal for a minute and there is no pain through that motion – so I will get on the bike this afternoon and just do some sort of flat loop.

I need to think about my challenge though. I wanted to do this all running but I don’t think that will happen now. I could extend the time but I wanted to drop into the virtual Spine Race Sprint after the Berlin Wall so need to finish this month. I think maybe what I will do is upload today’s cycle manually and see how things go next week. If the challenges are about consistency and getting out then this is also sort of working – my default position with an injury is often to just to nothing, this is making me think about what I CAN do instead if I can’t run . So maybe counting a short ride is ok.

Anyway, the Challenge. I have set off from the starting point on the Conqueror App map which seems to be a random spot on the Waltersdorfer Chaussee on the wall route in-between two points of interest noted on the website Mauerspuren (German only – for an English interactive map see here). From there I have made my way 2.43km along the route onto the absolutely awe inspiring (not) A113 which has the most spectacular views (not). If you want to learn more about the Wall, the website of the Berlin Wall Foundation isn’t a bad place to start.

It’s now a nap and a cat cuddle later and I have been on the bike. Just 5km, just to check that there is no pain while riding and that it doesn’t make it worse. It was fine, nothing hurts and it was a positive 12 minutes or so to get the blood pumping a little. I have uploaded it to the challenge. That’s the good news, the bad news is that I am still on the A113 (virtually obviously) – the third picture above is where I am now. I have gone past the first piece of the wall which sits outside the Museum Treptow. Not that you would know that from the challenge because it doesn’t have these things marked on it and it doesn’t come up in the narrative. So below is the screenshot from the Mauerspuren website linked above. I have now received my first challenge ‘postcard’ which just gives a pretty basic history.

So let’s see what tomorrow brings and go from there.

Challenge paused while I get my shit together

Jess Guth1 Comment

…come on we all know that I am not actually ever going to get my shit together! I massively jumped ahead in my virtual challenge by including a couple of Zwift rides. I made a good start with running and then a good start with the Dynamic Runner April 2 week challenge before getting derailed again. Our friend came to stay for the weekend. Well from Friday morning to Sunday morning. We’d all taken Friday off work so went for a lovely long walk at Bolton Abbey. On Saturday I had to work (Open Day) and then it was somehow Wednesday before I did anything exercise-y again and that was only a little walk. And then it was today. Yesterday I was so tired I basically got up late, did a few bits in the garden with Kath, had lunch, fell asleep for most of the afternoon, had tea, watched some tv, went to bed.

Today I woke up feeling a little better, less dazed and confused. After breakfast I did some yoga and after pottering about a little I did day 5 of the April challenge (hello glutes). There is something about running though. I want to. I mean I want to get back to the running fitness where I can just pop out for a quick 5km and it not really be a thing. To get there I need to get out consistently and I want to but… so I am spending some time doing yoga and doing some strength work to figure out what that ‘but’ is all about. I think there are several things going on.

  1. Running means going out there – like where other people might be. I don’t feel hugely confident at the moment. I feel super unfit (because I am) and I just don’t want to deal with the feeling of being judged. This is all on me. I know very few people are judging, very few people would even notice me or pay me any attention at all. All of the other runners I see out and about either nod, ignore or say something encouraging. And even if people are judging, since when do I care? And when I stop to consider it, I don’t care. So it’s all weird.
  2. I can’t make decisions about running. I am struggling to decide where to run, what route to take. It feels like another decision, another thing to be a responsible adult about. I also can’t decide on a plan so therefore I can’t decide what sort of run I am doing and so I just don’t do anything. I should just pick a plan. I have a strong anti couch to 5km plan reaction at the moment. No idea what that’s about. I could go runDisney plan but that doesn’t tell me what intervals to run. I could just run completely by feel but then I might just walk and not push at all and I still have to decide where. I know, weird and stupid.
  3. I absolutely completely do not want to ‘jiggle’. That sensation at the moment is a hard no. I have that about running and also about HIIT. Anything that involves jiggling, I’m out. I have good sports bras, it’s not that. I look after my boobs quite well and make sure they have all the support they need – but I still just don’t want to jiggle. It’s not painful, it’s not even uncomfortable. It’s just jiggling. And jiggling is currently right up there with rolling around in nettles. So there’s that.
  4. Let’s talk about doing hard. I have been thinking about whether I am actually just in one of those phases where I just can’t or don’t want to do hard things. I think it probably is true that work is currently taking up a lot of emotional capacity for all sorts of reasons and that therefore I want easy outside of that. But I also think it is true that I want brain easy not physical easy. Anything that requires decision making feels impossible. The bike works well here because once I have decided on the programme (generally by picking the one recommended for me), I just get on the bike, do as I am told until the ride is done. No decisions needed. No questions about whether I could take an extra rest or cut the route short because the bike doesn’t give me a choice. I don’t have to think, I just do. Same thing for a yoga session or the dynamic runner workout or one of the Joe Wicks sessions. As long as there is no jiggling, there is no issue. Press play, do. I can’t always do all the exercises but my brain can cope with modifying a side plank or dropping to knees in a push up. What it can’t seem to cope with is deciding whether to turn left or right when I reach the end of our road.
Cienfuegos

So anyway, over the last week I have made zero progress on the challenge. So virtually I guess I am hanging out in Cienfuegos. That’s funny really because I don’t think we spent much time there at all on our trip. We left Havana on the morning of the 29th December 2010 and we stayed in the hotel on the outskirts of Trinidad that night. We stopped off several times along the way (and I’ll see if my virtual route takes me to some of those stop offs as I am going the other way). Thinking back to the trip, we took a slightly different route with different sights. While on the real trip we did some hiking in the Escambray Mountains, spent New Year’s Eve under the stars and had a dip in the pool under the Salto del Rocio waterfall located within Parque Guanayara; the virtual challenge headed for El Nicho waterfall. I assume because it is closer to the road between Trinidad and Cienfuegos and a more popular tourist spot (according to Google anyway). In a way it is a shame that the way I covered distance in the challenge meant I sort of hopped across from Trinidad to Cienfuegos almost missing the bits in-between. Because those couple of nights in the Escambray Mountains were really spectacular. They were also a bit meh because Kath inadvertently had orange and was poorly for New Year and had to do a good chunk of hiking feeling crap (she’s allergic). But it was stunning to be there and we were lucky to see a meteor shower which lit up the sky with shooting stars. I know sometimes it feels like the magic is struggling to cling on, work can seem pointless, people can be vile and stupid, the world is on fire and there is so much wrong that we feel powerless to fix but thinking back to evenings like those is a reminder that the magic is there. I am going to try and look for it more. I know that night is a long long time ago now but there is the same joy to be found in our sunrises and sunsets, the birds coming to our feeders, the deer we see on our runs and the hedgehogs busying themselves in our garden at night. It was there this morning when little Stormcat interrupted my yoga and came and curled up on me and purred.

So maybe it’s not about getting my shit together. Maybe it is just about noticing the magic, smiling and rolling with it. Just as long as there’s no jiggling, I’m ok with that.

Time for Big Girl Pants!

Jess Guth1 Comment

And just like that we are in mid April. I mean what the actual fuck are we doing in April? Remember my happy run back in January? The one where I felt good. Yep, can we go back to that please. It really felt like I was getting somewhere again and that fitness was slowly coming back and that running could be really fun again. And then I got flu. I was off work for most of January because I just couldn’t shake it. I feel like I was not only off work, I feel like I may have stepped off the world – I don’t really remember January. I was asleep or reading or watching romance fiction – because that’s normal for me (not). I am not having a go at romance readers here – you do you. It’s just not my thing generally and I am still at a loss to explain why it was then. Anyway, February just felt like a battle to get through a day without falling asleep. I did very little in terms of moving off the sofa/ chair. I went to work when I had to but otherwise I was just a couch potato because anything else was too exhausting. I went for a walk at Bolton Abbey and then needed a 2 week rest.

Towards the end of February I thought that maybe it was time to get moving again. I was scared of running though. I didn’t want to get down the road and not be able to function. So I got on the bike in the garage and actually it wasn’t horrendous. I did two days back to back of cycling for 45 minutes ish taking it easy, not following a programme, just sort of peddling along thinking about nothing much. Then I did another virtual ride a week later. And there we are in March and I can still barely move – clearly running the Kielder 11 mile night run was never going to happen. We still went to Kielder Water even though neither of us could do our races and we had a couple of lovely walks instead of our planned runs – but I was tired. I slept lots, lounged in the hot tub, did some very gentle yoga.

When we got back from Kielder Water, we decided to try the gym again. We’re too old to get away with not strength training so we have been going – not lots but at least once and mostly twice a week for a good weights session. We went really early on a Sunday and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Maybe I just hadn’t woken up yet. So the gym has been the most consistent. Yoga is second. On the 23rd March I finally went for a run. Just a mile at run walk of 30/30. It should be easy, right. Well it wasn’t. But I did it and tried hard not to be grumpy about it. But then I was scared again so ended up not doing anything, then going back to HITT once or twice and then today I went for another run. Same thing: A mile run walk and then turn round. This time I kept going a bit after I turned round so in total I ran/walked a mile and a half and walked half a mile. Progress is progress.

I’ve deferred Rasselbock’s Sherwood Big Loop event that we were looking at doing next weekend to their 2 day winter event instead and we have a plan for that – watch this space. The next thing booked is the 23k at the Lakeland Trails in July – I am not thinking about it really. I am not likely to be ready and that’s ok. I can’t rush this. I just need to build some consistency, just get out there one step at a time. Motivation is hard because running is actually just hard at the moment. It isn’t fun and I am struggling to access the memory bank of fun running.

So anyway, that’s where I’ve been in case you’ve missed me. I’ve been hiding and grumpy and frustrated and paralysed by the task ahead. But being grumpy about fitness lost and scared of how hard it’s going to be will not actually make me feel any better and will also absolutely not get me fit again. So it’s time for big girl pants. I am a 47 year old woman, I am generally fuelled by perimenopausal rage (and caffeine) – I can do anything.