Ah well that glorious few seconds at the end of the last run I wrote about was short lived. I’ve been out once sine then and it was fairly miserable. Although I was excited I’d got out at all. Then I got a little busy with stuff and with excuses so did sweet FA for the rest of the week. Yesterday was supposed to be ‘Dopey proof of time day’ but there was absolutely no way I was dragging my arse round the Manchester Half Marathon and Kath is still coming back from injury. So no proof of time for us so we will be starting our Dopey races at the back – hopefully not dead last though. It’s a bit meh to have not started yet another race. But we went to Manchester anyway and had a lovely Saturday, wandering round the city, watching the world go by, drinking mocktails and generally just being. It was lovely. Somehow though on Sunday I was exhausted. I slept for a chunk of the afternoon when we got back and I went to bed really early and slept for about 11 hours. I feel marginally better today. I am not really up for doing hard things though. Every excuse busting trick in the book isn’t really working. I am happy on the sofa and not at all interested in moving off it. Possibly a bit of depression, maybe just end-of-term fatigue. Who knows but it’s meh.
I need to something else. I am going to see if posting my plan for the week here helps me actually do it – I am not promising. You might just get a week of excuses but here goes:
Today I was going to run. I haven’t. I have done an upper body strength session and 5km on the bike (was meant to be 10k but my legs died – meh). I will do my Daily stretches and the foot injury prevention session 1 before bed
Tuesday: I am off work so no excuses! 45 minute run and I would like to re-start the Dynamic Runner strength programme. Daily stretches and Foot session.
Wednesday: Re-try the 10k bike, Daily stretches and foot session and the 2nd strength session
Thursday: Rest (I am away for work) so just daily stretches and foot session. If I want to do something because I am bored in the hotel, there’s a beginner barre that doesn’t need equipment or much room
Friday: Still away so a morning run from hotel – 45 minutes ish. Daily stretches and the last foot session
Saturday: 5 mile run, Strength Session 3 and Daily Stretches
Sunday: Bike, Daily stretches and Session 1 of another injury prevention programme – maybe the ankle strength one (7 days)
The Daily Stretches are always around 15-18 minutes and the foot programme is no more than 10 minutes each time. The strength sessions are 20-30minutes. And yes I know it is not the ideal plan with the strength sessions back to back etc but it’s where they fit in around being away. I’ll keep you posted!
Ah yes, running. It’s been crap. I am totally inconsistent, I have zero motivation, my lungs don’t feel right (Covid damage? Just totally unfit?), my back and hips are niggly, everything is tight, hay fever is a bitch and my head is not up for doing hard things at the moment. I want easy, comfort zone, not pushing anything anywhere. I am not currently convinced that it might be kind of fun to do the impossible. I’m really not.
BUT, I also really want to be able to do stuff. I miss my fitness, I miss running just being a thing that I do and not an endless drama and mind games to actually get myself out of the door. I want to do the Dopey Challenge in January, I want to do the Great North Run in September and all the milestones and adventures in-between and I want to do them with joy. I want to have fun. I don’t want it all to just be one big long miserable slog. So I need to get fitter. A lot fitter. Which means I have to go do the things that are impossible and hope that somewhere somehow the fun comes back and I re-discover the joy.
So today’s step 1 or the many many step 1s and re-starts and re-boots and whatever over the last few weeks and months: Get out and run. I had put off going for a run all week. One thing I am good at is excuses. I could give you a perfectly reasonable sounding one for each run I didn’t do. None of them are justifiable really. though. So anyway the plan today was for us each to go to our own thing before breakfast and by the time I properly woke up, Kath was already out on her loop and just about back home. We had a coffee together and Einstein cat came into bed so there’s 2 excuses to not go right there – first that we were going to have breakfast together and I had slept a lot later than Kath and she was already back and so she’d be hungry so I should just make breakfast and go later (going later basically never happens). Kath put that excuse to bed by declaring she was happy having granola and we could just do our own thing. Einstein is Kath’s cat through and through so I rarely get cuddles with him so I really didn’t want to disturb him cuddled right into me curled up under my legs. Again Kath pointed out that I could just go when he moved and it really didn’t matter – nowhere to be today.
So, vaguely plausible excuses put to bed, I got out of bed. I’d been thinking about where to go. I really struggle on any sort of up. It’s like the minute my lungs have to actually work they can’t. I get out of breath really quickly and sort of grind to a halt. Obviously therefore I avoid up. That’s not going to help. So I decided that I would start with up this morning and walk towards Keighley Gate. Added bonus here that setting off walking is less scary than setting of running. I couldn’t actually remember whether I am supposed to be on a 3 mile weekend or whether it’s a 5 mile weekend and honestly at this point I don’t care. The plan is gone. I just need to build some sort of consistency somehow. I thought 2 miles up and 2 miles down would be good.
I set off on a good march up the hill. After about 50 metres I was huffing and puffing and after a further 50 metres I thought maybe this was a really bad idea. Lungs were burning and I was huffing and puffing and really wanted to slow down. I slowed a little bit just to breathe but kept walking. I made it to be mile in about 19.5 minutes which actually in my history of walking that stretch really isn’t too bad.I was knackered though. Onwards. At 1.5 miles my back said Hi with a sharp pain across the bottom right. I might have yelped. My hip joined in. At 1.65 miles I thought it was all a bit silly and I should head back down before anything really hurts. I started jogging and it was ok. Pain wasn’t worse really but now I felt hot. I put 30 seconds walk breaks in every minute or 90 seconds. I was making a really conscious effort to make sure the run was positive overall. I was slightly irritated that I was using walk breaks on what is essentially a long downhill but it also felt like the right thing to do.
And then, for just a brief moment the magic returned. As I turned left onto our road, everything felt perfect. There was no pain, no niggle even, my form felt perfect, my glutes properly engaged, my speed picked up but felt almost effortless. For just a short 30 seconds ish at the end of my run everything came together, rhythm, cadence, breathing, form. It felt perfect. It is fun to do the impossible. There is joy in hard after all. Now how do I bottle that? How do I hang on to that when my body and mind are screaming at me that it’s all pointless and I can’t run anyway so why bother trying? I don’t know, but for now I’ll take it.
And, if I told you that Disney pace requirement is 16 minute mile, you will understand from the screen short below why today’s effort had an added bonus level of excitement:
Nearing the end of January and I haven’t run as much this month as I wanted to but I have definitely made progress. As of today I have run just under 20 miles – not far off a 3rd of the entirety of last year’s mileage. I have done some yoga almost every day. Sometimes only 10 minutes and often sabotaged (supported?) by Storm Cat but this is huge progress and I have done a few strength and HIIT sessions. I have lots to feel good about really. And I am trying. There’s that niggling voice in my head that keeps reminding me that I am way behind where I should be given the things I have coming up. A voice that keeps telling me that I am insane to think I can do the Yorkshire 3 Peaks in 90 days. A voice that keeps pointing out the obvious fact that I am still close to the heaviest I have ever been. A voice that will not accept that losing about 6 pounds over the course of a month is fine, good and steady progress and instead insists that the weight loss needs to be faster.
Storm Cat helping with Yoga
But while the voice is there, it is less forceful than it sometimes is. Yesterday I eventually managed to get out in the afternoon. I had all sorts of plans when I was still sitting on the sofa. I was going to run the 2 miles down the hill and along the canal a bit before turning round and running 2 miles back including the hill. But as I set off it soon became very clear that my lungs were not playing. I couldn’t get air in, I was puffed after just a couple of 30 second running intervals and the idea of taking a walk break out was ludicrous. It was tempting to just give up and there was a time where I would have done. But not yesterday. I physically shrugged and said to myself that it would be silly to turn back. I’d done the hardest bit and got out the door and being out was good. Plan A might not be on the cards but doing something is better than doing nothing. So I carried on, I stuck to my 30 seconds runnings followed by 30 seconds walking and gritted my teeth. The voice was there but it never got into monologue mode.
Me after the longest 2 miles ever
My back was niggly (lack of core strength) and I sounded more like a steam train than human but somehow I made it to a mile. ‘So’, I thought to myself ‘If I just do that again, I will have run 2 miles, and 2 miles is good’. On I went, suddenly conscious of the people along the canal, conscious of what I looked and sounded like, the assumptions people would make. The voice got louder and at about 1.5 miles I nearly stopped and walked home. I was, rarely for me, running with music so instead of stopping I just turned the volume up and focused on the lyrics to push the voice out of my head and then, suddenly there we were, 2 miles done. Everything seemed to hurt, I felt slightly dizzy and I couldn’t get air into my lungs fast enough. I started walking home and I recovered. I was fine. I did it. Perhaps not plan A but I was out and moving. Good enough.
This morning we went to Bolton Abbey and right up until we set off I was looking forward to it. I like running at Bolton Abbey. I like running through the wooded bits, I like the paths – not really trail so my scaredy-cat brain doesn’t need to worry about mud and slippery and all the silly things it worries about – but not tarmac either. I like listening to the birds, looking out for herons (none today) and the otters which continue to be elusive. I like listening to the musings of the river that sometimes whispers in confidence and sometimes shouts in anger but mostly just tells her own story as she meanders. But Bolton Abbey isn’t flat and I was not at all sure I had it in me today. Plan A was the Barden Bridge loop, Plan B was the Aqueduct loop and Plan C was to run to the Strid and back (actually plan C was to get back in the car and find somewhere for coffee and I wasn’t far off implementing Plan C after having gone for a pee). Kath set off to run the Barden Bridge loop and for a while I could see here ‘Dopey in Training’ shirt make steady progress ahead of me. She looked comfortable (she later said she wasn’t and it took her ages to settle) and that made me smile.
I walked the first 3 minutes to get moving and then I started running 30 second intervals. I was struggling physically from the go. Lungs struggled and my back was sore. I was in real danger of spiralling into negativity and just giving up. But I was wearing my new Dopey in training shirt. Kath bought it for us for my birthday, we designed it together and it came the other day. I couldn’t give up on its debut. I needed to give it a proper inaugural outing! I thought about what doing the short proud could look like today. Well so much of Dopey and certainly the training is actually just getting it done. It isn’t always pretty and more does it have to be. It’s about getting in the right mental place to just grind it out. So doing the shirt proud today meant doing the distance today, no excuses, even if it meant walking lots. I walked up the path by the Strid noting that Plan C was conquered – I was not turning round now. I ran down the hill and managed a few more proper 30/30 intervals along the flat. I was coming up on the aqueduct. The loop would still be 3.5 ish miles, that’s good. I’ve been struggling so doing that would be progress, right? Maybe – but that’s not what I set out to do today. Remember: The distance. Today. No excuses. Dopey. Proud. Nothing was seriously hurting, nothing was getting worse. I was tired, I was huffing and puffing but I was fine.
I carried on. I saw Kath on the other side of the river still looking good. I waved. I smiled and dropped back into running intervals. I’d walked a fair bit but I was doing ok. I hot two miles and in spite of being a chunk slower even than yesterday, it hadn’t felt too bad. I crossed Barden Bridge, I tried to stick to the 30/30 intervals on the flat and once past the aqueduct again I walked the slopes, ran the downhill and did a bit of both on the flat. Nemesis hill doesn’t seem so bad just walking and I ran down the other side. Back on the flat I tried to drop back into 30/30 but my calves were cramping so I jogged/hopped /walked from random landmark to random landmark. Through the last gate, onto the bridge and I could see Kath sitting with a coffee at the Cavendish Pavilion. I jogged to her and was done.
The running itself was pretty awful but it was a great run. I got a little bit better at doing hard. I reminded myself that the little niggly voice is not in control. January has not been perfect but it has been good enough and good enough is bloody brilliant!
I am not entirely sure I had really thought through what ‘doing Cliffe Castle parkrun’ would mean when I suggested it for New Years Day. It’s our home parkrun. We have actually only run it two or three times before and have volunteered a few times. Anyway, starting the new year with a parkrun seemed like a good thing to do and when deciding which one, we quickly discounted those which would be muddy in places – mainly because my feet are still a bit sensitive and definitely prefer cushioned road shoes over trail shoes at the moment. But I am barely 5km fit. I have had hardly any runs of that distance and my lungs and willpower seem to give out around 2 miles ish at the moment. So I have no idea what made me think that joining a group of people to haul our backsides round a 3.1 mile course with a huge hill in the middle that you have to do 3 times would be a good thing to do this morning.
Anyway, I am assuming you all know what parkrun is. If not – it’s a weekly 5km timed run, usually on a Saturday but with special events on Christmas Day and New Years Day, which is free and you just need one registration for all parkruns round the world. So, Cliffe Castle parkrun. I always say I quite like the course because it is basically all down hill apart from the so-called Cliffe. But I think maybe I just forget how bad the Cliffe actually is. I was expecting more people to turn up today than did and while I was expecting to be really quite slow, I wasn’t expecting to be right at the back. It doesn’t actually matter at all but somehow in the moment it did matter. I didn’t like it. I have come last at parkrun before (I know, I know, you are never last, the tail runner/walker is…) when I did it in Bath and I don’t usually mind the idea or the reality of coming last. But today I did.
We set off at the back of the pack and jogged reasonably happily down the hill, turned left onto the path and eventually found ourselves at the bottom of the bloody big hill known affectionately (or not) as the Cliffe. We walked up it and I had definitely forgotten how steep it was and how long it goes on for. When we eventually doubled back on ourselves and the hill changed from actual hill to slight slope there was no way I was running yet. I didn’t start running again until we were back on broad tarmac paths going downhill. I was tempted to duck out and just go back to the car. But that would have taken a little more planning and as quickly as the thought came, we were past the entrance to the grounds that would have made that possible.
I ran/walked lap 2 until we got to the Cliffe. We walked up again and my lungs were next to useless. I huffed and puffed my way to the top and seriously thought about going to the car. Kath was spending her time chatting away and trying to make me laugh but my sense of humour had parked itself at the finish line and if I wanted it back I was going to have to finish. So, more run walk, with a little more walk, for lap 3 and a walk that felt more like a crawl up the Cliffe the third time. I barely had enough breath to say thank you to the marshals at the top. Still huffing and puffing I tried to keep run/walk going, I tried to ignore the fact that the tail walker was the only person behind us and that it was beginning to feel like the marshals were waiting for us (they weren’t, there were a couple of finishers not far in front and some more not far in front of them). I ran up the last hill and got to the finish with lungs burning and struggling to breathe. Still, it’s done. I am sure at some point I will enjoy having done that.
So that’s it, as the clock ticks over, we take down old calendars and put up new ones, 2023 is done. We draw an arbitrary line and start again in the morning to welcome 2024.
I’m not really sad to see 2023 go. It showed me the worst of people, how broken some people are and how many really only care about themselves. 2023 renewed my disappointment in people, made me bin more role models and discard more heroines. A lot about 2023 confirmed to me that really, most people are completely overrated and you are almost always better off with a cat.
2023 also showed me the best of people. I met, worked with, chatted with, ran with, taught, was taught by and laughed with people who showed me and others genuine kindness and warmth and who restored my faith that there are good people out there, some even approved of by cats.
In terms of running, 2023 has been…, not quite sure how to put this really. 2023 has not been a running year. According to Strava I have run 63 miles all year. I’ve tracked walks of about the same distance. I’ve done some yoga and pedalled about in zwift a bit and only recorded 78 days of activity of one sort or another. In terms of exercise, well, the less said the better! I finish the year the heaviest I have ever been and unfit, very unfit. But that just is fact.
I am usually reflective at this time of year but this year I am not very focused and can’t quite get the words so here are my reflections in photo format. One from each month, all from places that hold memories – old and new. Make of them what you will and I hope some make you smile.
really (not) a runner 