I am struggling for a title because the usual ‘starting again’, ‘back to basics’… don’t quite fit. I had a therapy session this morning which was well timed because I have been struggling this week. Talking it through was so helpful and it all makes so much more sense now- I was/am completely over peopled. After a busy week that included a day on main campus, presentation to the Executive, 3 days of conferencing, running a team day, marshalling at a half marathon and then the great north run, my system is in shock. That tracks!
We talked about movement and running and whether I was in a need/have to or want space. I had already planned start a 5km running programme and do the first run today so as I was driving round to the car park at Bolton Abbey and getting sorted I was interviewing myself in my head:
So, Jess, do you enjoy running the moment?
No not really.
Really? Why is that?
It just feels hard and like I am not making any progress at all
But you still want to run? Tell us a bit more about that
Yes. I know the joy it can bring. The joy of being outside, of being in nature, feeling it, the joy of being able to move.
When you look back at your happiest running what comes to mind?
Well, running or run walking a loop at Bolton Abbey of whatever distance and having coffee and breakfast afterwards.
And then I laughed at myself. Running is only partly about the running itself. It’s also about the being able to run or walk and then have coffee, to not be in pain or so knackered that the only option is to go straight home. It’s about ticking runs off and the sense of achievement that comes with consistency. It’s about saying yes to long walks or uphill adventures without worrying about whether I can do it.
But mostly it’s about the joy of being able to feel the rain on my face, smell the rain on the car park tarmac, hear it rustling as it bounces its way through the trees. Running is a way for me to find joy in the everyday that I don’t get from anything else. I’d lost sight of that.
So I set off on my first run of the programme. Running 30 seconds, walking 2 minutes eight times. I deliberately turned my face into the rain and bounced into puddles. I laughed at myself as I sucked the autumn air into my lungs and wrapped myself in the solitude of the empty paths.
The run almost finished too soon. I ordered coffee and a bacon sarnie to relive a happy running tradition and to offer my system a gentle and calm restart.
I love running in so many weird and wonderful ways.
Since returning from Ambleside a couple of weeks ago, I am finally making progress. I have done the first 2 weeks, that’s 4 rides, of the very basic training programme in Zwift. I have actually enjoyed it but it’s clear that doing the ramp test while still recovering from COVID was a mistake. I need to re-do it as it’s making the sessions that rely on that measure too easy.
I restarted yoga but really only managed the morning floor flow on and off. I have done 6 days of daily stretches from the Dynamic Runner app though and I do really like those. Just around 16-17 minutes a day and targeting all the areas that get tight with running.
Ah yes running – that’s why I’m doing all this, so I can run. It’s only 6 weeks to the Great North Run and we know I’d barely been out before I was poorly. I’d had a go at the first couple of short runs for Dopey week 1, then nothing for what would have been week 2. Week 3 it was Thursday before I made it out and it was a tough one. I felt like giving up after a mile but slogged it out another 1.66 miles to meet Kath at the hairdressers for a lift back up the hill. It was hot though. My pink laces seemed ridiculously bright in the unusually hot West Yorkshire sun.
This week is week 4. Monday I spent all day putting off going out and in the end I just walked. It was such a mental battle to get out though that even that felt like a huge win. Thursday I got out for a 3 mile no drama plod but I was getting worried about distance. It really felt like 3 miles was about as far as my body was prepared to go.
So today was a bit of a test. I needed to do a long run that was actually longer than 3 miles. We have a loop we call the farm loop which is roughly 7. It needs modifying a little at the moment because we have one canal bridge out so can’t loop home across it. I had absolutely no clue how this would go.
Well, it went surprisingly well. Let’s park any discussion about pace. I’m coming to terms with the idea that I just am a couple of minutes a mile slower than I used to be. So I set off using 30/30 run/walk intervals. I tried to go deliberately slow. Absolutely zero effort spent on pace. I really wanted to get past 2 miles without finding it hard. That worked. The 2 mile beep actually made me jump. All was good. Mile 3 was also fine. Just plodding along. I passed a few runners with race numbers on – I presume doing the It’s Grim Up North Sir Titus Trot. Mile 4 was a bit annoying as I dropped off the canal, through the farm that gives the loop its name and along narrow roads where I kept having to stand in to let cars pass. Still, running wise no drama.
Just into mile 5 I added an additional walk interval as I went up the slope back to the canal. I came out behind a couple of runners I’d seen in the distance earlier and they were walking with a few runs thrown in. I was walking slower than them but running faster than they were walking so over the next mile I slowly caught them up. I went past and then they immediately passed me again as they set off on a run. Their running was faster than mine and I stayed a fairly constant distance behind them for the rest of my run. they surged ahead when running, I caught up when they weren’t.
Mile 5 was fine. Mile 6 was fine but I was grateful for the distraction of two herons one of which led me to add a second additional walk interval so I could have a little chat with it. As I approached the final mile I began to try and work out where I would finish and really hoped it would not be too far beyond one of the canal bridges that we call the post office bridge. Running past that seemed like it would be tough because that was the obvious point at which to stop and walk home.
7 miles took me almost exactly to that bridge. 7 miles. No drama. Slow but within Disney pace. On reflection I probably could have done with some fuel for the last couple of miles (I only took water) but otherwise it was a good solid run.
The. I walked home very slowly up the hill. I stopped frequently to sip my water and stretch out the various bits of my body that were now cross with me. After food and a bath I’ve been doing very little- mostly watching random sport at the Olympic Games. I’ve stretched and nothing hurts. Happy.
My February roundup is actually pretty much contained in my Body Coach App Cycle 2 Review. I did a bit of running and a bit of stuff from the app… and it was fine. I have now done a bit of planning for March and I have changed a couple of things. So the first thing to note is that I have gone back a week on the running plan. I could push on but I’m in no rush and I don’t feel settled into it so I am repeating a week before moving on. It feels sensible and right. I don’t need to reach a specific distance by a specific point and I’d rather feel comfortable doing what I am doing than constantly pushing for further. I will continue with the two 30 minute runs during the week. I think I will try and run as much of those as I can without walking – but depending on the route there will likely be some walking. West Yorkshire ain’t flat! My weekend runs this month will go up to 5.25 miles and I will try and do those run/walk with 45 second running/30 second walking. Let’s see how that goes. I might even repeat another week if the 4.25 miles I am to do this weekend feels really hard.
I am still aiming to do 5 Body Coach workouts each week but if I am struggling I am happy to drop one and just do the run. I so far quite like the cycle 3 workouts so maybe motivation won’t be as much of an issue as in Cycle 2 and I can get them done in the morning. I have gone back to work on a phased return today so I now need to fit work into life again so there’ll be some experimenting with how that works best. I like the idea of a workout first thing and then running after work to draw a line under the work day but that might not actually be feasible. We’ll see.
Cycles 1 and 2 suggested that having the rest days as I had them didn’t really work. I had Tuesday and Saturday as rest days. It seemed like a good idea in planning. It left one weekend day free from workouts and running to devote to other things and then split the week into 2 workout days, one rest day, 3 workout days, one rest day… Except that on the Saturday I often felt like I wanted to do something, the workout or run could be done any time without fitting around other commitments (and now work) and somehow felt less pressured. This was the case even where I had completed workouts on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday already. Somehow I never felt like I needed or wanted the rest on Saturday or on Sunday. Monday was also good, a workout somehow nicely sets up the week. On Tuesday I’d welcome the rest day and then not really get going again, sometimes going for a run or doing a workout on Wednesday but struggling or then taking an extra rest day on the Thursday. So for March I am trying something slightly different. I am going to workout/run on 5 days and then have 2 back to back rest days. So Tuesday and Wednesday become rest days. It might not work but it is worth seeing if it does.
And yes, of course this blog post is just an excuse to share the photos of Odin and Einstein helping us with our planning.
We finally come to January 31st (or 357th if you feel a bit like me), how are you doing? Even I am beginning to struggle with lockdown. I am not a people person, I’m quite happy not seeing people and am happy to keep in touch virtually but I would give quite a lot to sit in a coffee shop with a coffee that someone else has made for me and maybe a pastry and just watch the world go by. I don’t even mind doing that on my own, just being amongst people would actually be quite nice. So yeah, if I am feeling like this my heart really goes out to those of you who really need those face to face interactions and feel energised by them.
I thought I would have a little look back at January and share my plans for February. As I looked ahead to 2021 I really wasn’t sure what the year would bring in terms of exercise and fitness. I was anxious about starting running again and grumpy about the non-existent fitness levels. I knew I wanted to start again but I really wasn’t sure about how things would go. My review of the first cycle on the Body Coach App from the other day perhaps shows that things are actually going pretty well. Fitness and strength are very very slowly coming back. I am a long way from where I was at peak fitness (which wasn’t that fit really but a happier level of fit) and there is a long way to go but when I remember to not compare myself to when I was Dopey fit, I am happy with how things are going.
January running hasn’t been spectacular but there has been running! I finish the month on 29.65 miles (more on why not 30 in a minute) which I was initially a bit disappointed with but then I looked back and there are only 3 months with higher mileage since April 2019 and none of those months are loads higher (under 40 miles). So in the context of how running shaped up over the last couple of years, the crappiness that was flu or Covid just a little more than a year ago now and the post viral crappiness that took all my fitness (but if that’s all it is taking I know I am one of the lucky ones) and the snow and ice that stopped me from venturing outside, then nearly 30 miles is good going!
Every now and again I get grumpy about my inability to run consistently without walk breaks. I like run/walk and I think I will always want to use run/walk for longer distances but I really would like to be able to run 10km without having to walk. How hard can it be? I will get there again. Patience. I have mostly been running using 30/30 second intervals but sometimes I get bored so sometimes I run the first mile and then drop into intervals, sometimes I run the first 5 minutes and sometimes, on routes with steeper bits, I run when I can and walk the hills. I found 30/30 really quite hard at the beginning of the year and pretty much impossible if there was anything steeper than flat involved. It’s getting much easier although I still really struggle to breathe going up and I wonder if partly that is still a post viral hangover that is making it harder to get the air into my lungs.
I have mostly run from home and I miss travelling to places to run. I’d love a run on the beach at Seahouses or a hike up one of the Yorkshire 3 peaks or a joint run with Kath at Bolton Abbey. But, patience. I have been lucky in that my therapist is based at Bolton Abbey and I can therefore travel there to see her and then take the opportunity while I am there to run. I never go far though, partly because I am often tired after therapy and just a little gentle mile or so helps clear my head without adding pressure and partly because I get side-tracked by coffee and then walk back sipping it. I could go further and get coffee on the way back but that section is often busy and busy is not why I run at Bolton Abbey. When I went last I had the run from the Abbey to the Cavendish Pavilion all to myself. I didn’t see another human soul until I crossed the bridge and headed for coffee. Bliss.
Running from home has had its rewards though. It’s not a bad place to run. Even just on the roads round the village is not unpleasant at all and sometimes it is quite nice to have a nosey at people’s gardens. They might not be in full bloom or showing off all their glory but you can still see quite a lot and get ideas. Running along the canal has been mixed. Some days it has been too busy with people to actually be enjoyable. For example, today I turned back sooner than I had planned and went a different route making my run an out and back more than a loop really because the stretch of canal ahead was just full of walkers and I had already got tangled up with people who didn’t have their dogs under control which meant I had to stop until they had retrieved them before running on. But on other occasions I have seen a kingfisher and stood and watched for ages. I call them kingfisher breaks and they are most legitimate reason to stop whatever you are doing and just spend a few moments being in the presence of greatness. There is something powerfully restorative about seeing them perched on branches just above the water and then inevitably fly off in a flash of glimmering orange and blue.
Most of my running has been a couple of miles and then a walk up to come home, maybe a little over 2 miles but not much. I am ok with that. It’s actually all within the Disney 10km training plan that I am loosely following. That plan had me running (or run/walking) 3 miles today. Yesterday I looked at my mileage and got into my head that I needed 5 miles something to hit 30 miles in January and that I could totally do that even though that would be 2 miles more than the furthest run since goodness knows when. What I didn’t get into my head was that the ‘something’ actually meant I needed nearly 6 miles. So after having done my Body Coach App workout first thing this morning, I set off early lunch time to sort out these 5 miles something. I got half way down the first stretch of road, about 3 minutes in maybe and felt like turning back. Legs were tired and I was struggling to settle in the cold air. But you know, 5 miles something won’t just magically run themselves, so onwards. I looped round to the canal rather than running straight down to it – it’s a sort of cheap mile somehow and then plodded along the canal almost always sticking to 30/30 expect for the dog issue and standing in a couple of times to move out of the way of couples who clearly think they might be parted forever if they walk in single file.
I was going quite well when I bumped into a friend of ours and stopped to chat for a few minutes. I was about 2.5 miles in and intended to carry on along the canal for another mile and a half and then come back and loop up the former golf course and home. But like I said, the canal was busy and getting busier so I changed my mind, came off the towpath at the next bridge and ran along the road and back through the estate I’d run down earlier. It was hard going after that stop. I stopped my watch at 4.5 miles which happened to be just at a walk break because I felt sure my legs were done. I wanted to save the 4.5 miles run/walk and then just measure the distance home as part of the cool down. I knew it would be roughly a mile, just under. But once I’d walked for a couple of minutes I decided to have another go and ran a a couple of consecutive minutes and a bit more 30/30 so I actually ended up doing 5 miles of run/walk before walking up the rest of the hill home. I finished on 5.46 miles which wasn’t enough to make it 30 for the month. That’s ok though, my legs are tired and I am not going out again for the sake of round numbers. They’re just numbers and I am not quite sure why I’d got it into my head anyway. January finishes on a strong note.
Looking ahead to February, my plan doesn’t change much. I still plan to do the 5 Body Coach workouts each week and to run 3 times a week. The workouts have now moved to Cycle 2 and have stepped up a little as far as I can tell so far. If they end up being too much when combined with 3 runs then I will drop one but I think I can probably work round that by choosing some of the workouts which are a little easier or which are more gentle on the legs. My midweek runs are 30 minute runs on the plan so they are what they are – often I run a loop that’s slightly more than 30 minutes, I guess it might not be if I get faster. The weekend runs don’t increase much in terms of distance -they go from 40 minutes next week, 3.5 miles the week after, 30 minutes the week after that and then finally 4.25 miles in the final week of February. That’s what is on the plan anyway. You never quite know what I might decide to do. Given that I have been getting on quite well with 30/30 I thought for February I would step it up a bit and try 45 seconds running with 30 second walk breaks and see how I get on. I’ll let you know.
I wasn’t really expecting to tell you this again this year! I had moments where I hoped and the odd glimmer of total madness where I dared to plan. But I didn’t really believe I would manage another actual run this year. When I last wrote I was testing the fitness water with some HIIT sessions at home – well parts of HIIT sessions. Well they felt sort of awful and I felt not quite right and weird. And then one day, about 10 days ago I managed all 3 sets, and it didn’t feel weird. It just felt hard. It felt like being unfit and not being used to any of the exercises and like maybe having started on the mince pies just a little too early this year. It felt familiar. My body does unfit really well. It understands what it feels like and what is asked of it. It grumbles in all the usual places and ways when asked to do something about it. It wobbles and creaks a little and grumbles but it also secretly knows which bits will be slightly less wobbly first, which bits need nursing along and which bits just need to get over themselves. It knows my thighs lie when they say ‘can’t’ but that my shoulders know their limitations and ignoring a ‘can’t’ from them is likely to result in a dropped weight or face plant. It also knows that my hips are quite bendy, my hamstrings are not. Being unfit and starting to get fitter is familiar territory, I was beginning to come home.
So if the HIIT sessions just felt hard but not being-poorly-weird then there was no real reason I couldn’t have a go at a run. Running feels scarier simply because I have to leave the house. If I don’t feel well I still have to get home; there might be other people (rude!) and there are other things to think about like traffic, curbs, potholes, dogs, cars, wheelie bins with minds of their own… so I made a very very gentle plan:
Week 0: Complete 4 HIIT sessions
Week 1 (now): 2 runs of 30 minutes running only 10 seconds of every minute; 1 longer run -same running interval
Week 2: 2 runs of 30 minutes running 15 seconds of every minute; 1 longer run using same intervals
Week 3: 2 runs of 30 minutes running 20 seconds of every minute; 1 longer run using same intervals
Week 4: 2 runs of 30 minutes running 30 seconds walking 30 seconds; 1 longer run 30/30 on Christmas morning
The I panicked about everything and did very little. Out of the 4 sessions I managed 2 and I struggled to get out to run. It’s now Thursday of Week 1 and after a day of pottering about in the kitchen baking I decided it was time. I found a pair of new New Balance long pants I bought a century or so ago (it’s 2020, time is meaningless) and got wrapped up warm. Then I went to set my watch and discovered that I couldn’t set a 10 second/50 second alert – it would have to be 15 /45 seconds or I’d have to set up a new workout to upload first. Hm. Ok well 15 seconds run it had to be then.
Kath came with me and we agreed just to do an out and back to the end of the road section of our sheep loop. It wouldn’t be quite half an hour but it would be a good start. So that’s what we did. 15 seconds of running – really concentrating on running form and going at a decent pace. It was pretty good. It wasn’t easy but my legs remember how to run and actually they weren’t too grumpy about having to move a bit faster and get the knees a bit higher and my lungs didn’t protest too much either. 1.5 miles all in and I am looking forward to the next one. I ran.
really (not) a runner 