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.
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.
For the first time this year I have managed to string 3 runs together in a week. Say it quietly so we don’t jinx it! The running itself is outrageously hard but it feels good. For the first time this year I ran in short sleeves and in spite of my hay fever settling in for the spring and summer now, the many shades of green and the blossom were gorgeous. I am very ploddy and I am trying not to be grumpy about it. I ran/walked 2 miles using 30/30 intervals. Then I walked another mile and a bit back home. And in spite of the recent Nike advert I am recording the entire 3.15 mile as a run on my spreadsheet – tolerate away Nike – you do you, I’ll do me. In case you didn’t see it, Nike used the phrase ‘Runners Welcome, Walkers Tolerated’ in their Boston Marathon ad. They have since withdrawn it following backlash. I am not really mad at the advert. I think it is idiotic to alienate a huge set of your potential customers but I don’t actually think that’s what will actually happen here. I am bemused that people are surprised that a company like Nike, or any other sports brand for that matter, would use that sort of advertising. I think calling them out is good, sure, but the internet outrage will have no impact. The only thing that would is if we stopped buying Nike gear and most of us won’t. I am pretty sure the ad did its job, we’re all talking about Nike, the backlash was undoubtedly anticipated, as was the withdrawal and apology. I mean think about this, marketing of sports clothing and shoes seems to me to all be about how that brand will make you fitter, faster, stronger, leaner (or, since the 90s seem to be back, skinnier). It’s about performance. It is not about comfortably being able to move your body in any way that feels right for you. It made me think about how difficult it is in my experience to find comfortable exercise clothes that fit well in my size. I’m a UK size 18ish – large yes but hardly whale size and certainly not unusual. There are a lot of sports brands that do not even make running tights or tops in my size. Others do but my choices are basically black tights or black tights. Anyway, I don’t want to rant. Let’s just say that if your brand doesn’t make anything bigger than a size 16, which comes up small and then call that XXXL, then you’re the problem. I did not fit into those items when I was very much marathon fit. So I get the outrage when sports brand imply that they are really for fit, fast, strong, skinny people but I don’t get the surprise. The whole industry has a problem with gatekeeping exercise and movement. Let’s just ignore that bullshit and get on with our lives. I ‘boycott’ most sports brands, not by choice, but because they don’t make anything in my size. Shoes are different of course but you’re not likely to find me trying on shoes from brands where I don’t fit in the clothes because I’d never go into a store and when I buy online, I stick to what I know.
Anyway, rant over. I am quite enjoying being part of the virtual challenge. I joined the Facebook Group. I am not sure why because we all know by now that most groups will just annoy me. I had a quick scan through and muted it. There seemed to be a lot of nonsense and some spectacularly stunning stupid and too much weight talk for my liking and people doing things that don’t make sense to me like signing up for multiple challenges at the same time and using the same runs/walks for them all. I am trying to be very ‘you do you’ about this and leave people to their thing but no. You cannot run (or walk or whatever) in one place physically and then transmit that to more than one virtual location. That’s cheating surely? But ok, you do you. I just don’t want to know about it. Anyway, here are a couple of screenshots from the App to give you a sense:
The first is the virtual bib you get when you register for the challenge. I like the colours on this one. The second is a shot from the map. The JG is where I am currently. The red marker is where I should be based on the time I set and distance of the challenge and the other markers note points at which I unlock a tree being planted (5 trees are planted for me completing this challenge – Conquerer Virtual Challenge partner with Veritree) or (not visible on this map) or local interests or local spots. At the bottom of that screenshot you can also see the percentage distance and time already covered. If you expand that you get details of those metrics. Below that is the main menu. The last picture is of my rewards page showing what I have ‘unlocked’ so far and how far it is to the next thing.
Those of you who read my last post and have a sense of Cuban geography might have noticed that I have jumped. I was intrigued to see how this would work because obviously 70 miles is not going to take me from Santiago de Cuba to Havana. I am too lazy to Google it but it must be 500 ish miles. So following my last run I was bang in the middle of Santiago on the Cuba map. It could have been on a tree like this – take in January 2011 and no idea what it looks like now.
Santiago de Cuba
At some point on today’s adventure I entered the portal and transported myself to the edge of Camaguey. Hm. Ok. That’s not what happened when we were actually in Cuba of course. In 2011we were coming the other way and before Santiago we were deep in the Sierra Maestra and hiked to Comandancia de La Plata. Stunning views and a sense of tangible history is what I remember from that day. I also remember wondering why some of the people on the trip had come to Cuba and on this particular trip as there seemed little or no interest in history and zero background knowledge. It’s not that I knew (or know) lots but I remember being taken aback by the ignorance of some and lack of curiosity in others. I probably had lots of questions but as usual, none would form fully until much later when the chance to ask them had passed. Sometimes that’s just how my brain works, it takes time to process and take it all in.
Sierra MaestraSierra MaestraSierra Maestra
So for the purposes of my virtual journey, we have jumped a few 100km but it was a great excuse to defamiliarise myself with a map of Cuba and look through the photos from the trip to try and work out where we were when and what that means for the timeline and route of our trip. I might be wrong of course, I have a very unreliable memory but it doesn’t really matter. It’s nice to have those memories and to let them lead me to questions that might occupy my brain on my next run. Questions about revolutions, questions about change, questions about power, questions about what the world could and should look and feel like for all of us. You know, just the little things.
Consistency. The mythical thing that will make everything fall into place and become joyful and easy… . Apparently. I spend enough time scrolling on social media to have read several idiotic takes on consistency and on how habit not motivation will build consistency. And I get it. I remember (vaguely) a short period of time where running was just something we did. We didn’t really think about doing it, we just did. It wasn’t a decision to make. But that time was brief and also, it might be fictional. Perhaps it was never like that. Perhaps getting out the door has always been the hardest part of running. My brain is good at making shit up and maybe remembering a time, whether it actually existed or not, where getting out to run was easy, isn’t a bad thing.
Anyway, there I was scrolling like we all know we shouldn’t and the claims about how to get your shit together were just getting more and more outrageous. Advice that seemed to boil down do ‘you just need to be disciplined and get up at 4am and exercise and drink your electrolyte infused water and eat the right macros, take the most expensive supplements on the market and here’s some guidance on what to say so you’re not seen as weak at work and then here’s your evening relaxation and skin care routine and and … I am exhausted and bemused just seeing the posts, never mind reading or engaging with any of it. It does however bring me back to a question – how do normal people get their shit together? Like not 4am runs every morning and mapped out to the second daily routines (It is now 19.02, time to relax for precisely 19 minutes) but normal. Normal as in, my job can be a bit random, sometimes the cat pukes on the bed at 3am throwing everything into chaos, or I was so busy that I am both completely dehydrated because I didn’t drink anything and desperate for a pee because I haven’t had time for a toilet stop or I am not going to the gym for love nor money today because – ew people or the world feels wrong and I need to hide under a blanket and cry. That sort of normal. Which reading it back might not in fact be normal. What I mean is, how, in all the chaos that is normal life and without the desire or will power to be really regimented, how do you build consistency? How do you get to habit, to where the brain just assumes you’re going to the gym or for a run so you don’t have to do battle with yourself each time? How do you get motivated enough to get past the need for motivation?
I know, if I could really figure that out and bottle it, I could stop with the academic nonsense and retire ungracefully. I don’t think there is just one answer though. I read a post that suggested you set an alarm with a motivational quote to get you up and out of bed – yeah that will elicit a sleepy string of expletives and not much else while I turn off the alarm, turn over and go straight back to sleep. Another post suggested sleeping in your gear. Yeah – the only time I will sleep in a sports bra is if I am too exhausted after a run to attempt getting out of it. Other suggestions included telling yourself you can come back if you still really don’t want to be out after ten minutes. That also doesn’t work because that is a given for me. If I am miserable I won’t force myself to push through. I am too old for that shit. Hard – sure. Miserable, nope. More suggestions – same time each day for exercise of some description – hello chaotic schedule. That might work if I went really early in the morning but anyone who has met me will know that that will go wrong very very quickly. If I don’t get 8 hours sleep a night for a period of time, armageddon will ensue. I am being negative. Sorry. Of course I will eventually (and into the summer it’s easier) get up early more consistently and run after work more consistently and just the line between doing hard and being miserable will move so I will do more. I know this. I just find all the social media stuff annoying and unhelpful because none of it strikes me as realistic but I also can’t quite shake myself free of the expectations that my ducks should be more in a row and I should be able to be more disciplined. (I know! I’m paying for therapy, I am working on the people pleasing good girl thing)
Anyway, given that I am too old to take the influencers seriously and too intelligent to believe the nonsense around fitness and health and wellbeing and getting your shit together that fills my feeds, I had to come up with something else to try and keep up motivation while re-developing habits. And what does work, always has worked for me, is a challenge, a medal and some sort of game. Ideally all three. The challenges we had set haven’t kept me going. I haven’t been able to work towards them and they haven’t provided the kick up the arse required. So just entering another race or setting a park run target or whatever isn’t going to work – its not immediate enough. So I decided I would try a virtual challenge, something that tracks as you go along rather than something that is just an end goal; something that provides interest over time and an incentive to reach the next thing and something that allows me to go at my pace. And of course I need a medal at the end. A quick google and I landed on the Conqueror Virtual Challenges. I signed up for a challenge (I’ll tell you more about which one and why that one etc next time) to see if it might just work and keep me motivated through the really hard bit of starting again.
Well, it did its first job which was to get me out today when I really just wanted to curl up and stare into space and work out how I managed to work all day without having anything to show for it. I went out only because I wanted to see if the app worked, if my strava would sync to it and what the look and feel of the app and challenge would be. So yeah – gamification works. For me anyway. I did 2 miles again. Run/Walk at 30/30 intervals. This time for the full two miles. I went the same mile out as previously but ran past a guy I know who was out chatting and we had a friendly exchange but I really didn’t want a second interaction on the way back so I turned off and went down hill. So I did run a slightly easier route in terms of slopes but I kept the run/walk going until the 2 mile beep on my watch. Then I walked the .70 of a mile home up the hill. Happy with that. Oh and me not wanting another interaction had nothing to do with the guy, I was a proper no people zone after work today.
Einstein receiving instructions from the Dino gangOdin – not too sure about being watched while having his tea
Anyway, I will tell you more about the challenge and the app as I get into it but for now there is one thing I want to mention because it pissed me off as I was completing the registration on the app. It’s a distance challenge, right. You can count all sorts of exercise to contribute, all good. I like that because it makes it really inclusive. But then the app asked for me height and weight. Annoying in itself. It doesn’t need that to track distance travelled. It’s irrelevant to the thing the app is designed for. And then, as if asking for weight wasn’t bad enough, it asked for ideal weight. So there it is. Just like that we have again made the assumption that exercise and signing up to a challenge must be about weight loss. Had they asked these questions before I signed up for the challenge I wouldn’t have signed up. It annoys the hell out of me. There is no reason for the app to need the information. The challenges are based on distance traveled, that doesn’t change based on how much someone weighs. I am not doing a challenge to lose weight. I am not running to lose weight, I am not going to the gym to lose weight. I am not doing anything to lose weight. I am doing the things I am doing to be fitter and stronger and so I can keep having adventures. My weight bobbing about a bit is a side effect of that, not a driving force. Anyway, I had already bought the challenge, so I completed the app registration, gave them my current weight as both the current and ideal weight which might fry their algorithm a bit at least and got over myself.
Next time I will tell you where in the virtual world I am and why I chose it and any other musings. For now, I have some more marking to do – you know, academic and that time of year!
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.
really (not) a runner 