Tag: Berlin Wall

A few little jogs and all is well

Jess Guth1 Comment

I love my random additional days off! There are a couple of bank holidays where we also get the Tuesday off from work and there is always something really nice about that additional day. It feels a bit indulgent in a way annual leave doesn’t. The plan for today was just to try out the calf a bit. Nothing silly but after yesterday’s gym session all is still well and it seems like the obvious next step is to see how it fairs out in the wild. So we went to Bolton Abbey. Kath went off on her 5 mile loop and my plan was to walk a mile which would take me almost to the Strid and then on the way back I would throw in a few little jogs to see how everything feels. The loop went like this:

  • Ooh it’s lovely and cool under these trees
  • Squirrel!
  • Bye Kath as I waved her off on her run
  • Hm, high path or low path? High path
  • Wild garlic smells lush
  • What’s that? Oh just a pigeon
  • Everything feels ok, good
  • Oh person, ‘hello’. No hello? Rude
  • Oh I am at the Strid already. Lovely. That was nice. Should I run now?
  • Little jog, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee downhill
  • Ok nothing hurts, did my knee just niggle? Nah, that was a brain niggle not a knee niggle
  • Ok, back we go. Little jog, body scan, all good
  • Slope, walk. But I could try and run. Stop it, be sensible!
  • Weeeeeeeee down the slope and on a bit. Ok all good
  • It’s kinda hot
  • My eyebrows are sweaty
  • Little run, all good. Keep going to that tree. No not that one, the other one. Which one? You know. Do I? Oh slope, walk
  • And run down the hill and keep going, keep going, yes it’s hot, keep going. Fuck that’s a big dog. Walk
  • ‘ Hi dog’ (and human). Aw friendly. That’s nice. Walk the hill though
  • And last little run down the slope to the Cavendish Pavilion. Ooh is that tightness? Niggle? Brain niggle or real niggle?
  • Doesn’t matter. I am out of the wood, too hot to run in full sun. Walk to car
  • Grab go bag with change of clothes, gym towel and deodorant and head for toilets
  • Thank goodness I am getting changed because these lycra pants are not coming back up after having a pee. Also, I think I have an actual puddle in my bra.
  • Good outing that. Happy

So that’s another 3.7km added to the Berlin Wall virtual challenge. Well, I continued along the road I was on and then turned right where I will have walked along a stretch planted with 45 cherry trees as a memorial. I continued along the Wall route past more remnants, a tower and then I hit the river Spree. The river also acted as a physical border with underwater barriers. There is a lot online about this if you are interested and on the Mauerspuren website you can see the various locations. After crossing the river I will have come to the East Side Gallery. We have been to that Gallery – the longest Open Air gallery in the world and the longest continuous stretch of Wall remaining. The 1.3km of that stretch will have taken a third of my run/walk today and I am sure that if I was doing it for real, I would have lingered. We probably have photos but what you can see online is probably better. After that I went onwards along the route, past more bits of wall. I’ll soon head left over the river again but that’s for next time.

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.