It has been so long since I have done anything energetic I was starting to wonder if I had permanently slipped back to a sedentary lifestyle. What with the doctor telling me I can’t run at the moment, the weather having a turn for the colder and no tangible goal to train for I have completely lacked motivation to get out of the house to do something.

After some persuasion though I was talked into going swimming at the local baths on Saturday morning. Nice and early at 8am we were there and it was filled with people who actually wanted to swim.

I did all of my swimming training for the Great North Swim in the pool at the Whitehouse, which although very nice was quite short at 15 metres iirc, and I seemed to be forever turning round and not able to swim at full power for very long. Shrewsbury pool on the other hand is 33 metres long, and with the diving boards it is very deep too. 45 minutes swimming and we packed it in. as far as pushing the boundaries of physical exertions go, this wasn’t a big effort but it was an important start again and I think this will become a regular Saturday morning thing.

Sunday saw me get the boat back out again. I can’t remember the last time I got the kayak out. It has got to be a good few months though and it told when I forgot my spraydeck. It wasn’t until I got into the boat on the launch and my hands tried to lock the deck into place with muscle memory, that I finally realised that I had forgotten something. I didn’t much matter though I wasn’t doing anything more exciting than taking in the sights of the Shrewsbury loop, and it was only when I paddled backwards that I took on some water slopping over my stern.

While out in the boat I had some serious thinking about my options for the Devizes to Westminster race next year. After all this is what I am ultimately planning for and this is one of the reasons why I update this blog every week… I still have over six months to get boat fit with a crewmate so it could be possible to be ready for the race but it would be hard work, and I always intended to do the initial boat work with a crew in the summer because the inevitable capsizes would be more bearable when the water is warm. The winter was then supposed to be about improving skill and honing race craft. But here I am looking at the winter season without having spent any time in a boat with another person. I blame myself for concentrating on other events and didn’t focus on this canoe race but it doesn’t change the fact that it will take an enormous effort to be ready now for 2010. My dad did mention on the weekend that Easter 2011 is as late as it can be and obviously a race later in the year will have more potential for being warmer.

So what’s this? Am I deferring the preparations for the Kayak race for a year?.. I don’t know. I think as far as the two man race is concerned though I probably have come to that decision even if I am finding it hard to admit it to myself.
But there are ways I can get into the DW race in stages. I could take part in the one man race which is staged over the Easter weekend with a stop every night. Or I could just do the build up races which take place through February and March to get an idea of sections of the course without going for the full blown race. The trouble with doing one man races, is finding a suitable boat (a fast and stable one man kayak). My current quest is to find somewhere that I can get a boat like my personal favourite Piranha Speeder either cheep enough that I can justify buying it, or maybe even find somewhere that hires them.

Whatever I plan on doing, I need to have a definite plan in place soon. Without a fixed goal to train for I am drifting in that fitness limbo where I don’t know what I should do and don’t have a motivation to do it.

Natural born sprinter

It’s been quiet here for the last few days. I have had a lot of things I have needed to do in the evenings, and following last Sunday’s big run, I have had my leg pain back. Nothing serious but the ongoing pain in my legs and the fact that I think my left shin bone is swelling noticeably more than the right shin finally convinced me to go to see my GP.

The last time I went to my doctor I got the distinct impression he thought I was having a bit of a time waste so I have been quite reluctant to go back, this time though I was pleasantly surprised to find him sympathetic to my running troubles (I suspect he is a runner himself).

We had a long talk through the bio-mechanics going on with legs and running and it seems that with my toe running I am a born sprinter, not a long distance runner. This is a shame as I quite enjoy long distance running finding it quite cathartic after a long day at work, and I don’t have the discipline to be a successful sprinter. But anyway, toe running is protecting my joints from the pounding heel runners can inflict on themselves as the foot, ankle, Achilles, etc. acts as a great shock absorber for each foot strike. Where I am saving myself from one set of injuries, it seems I am causing others.

There is a part of the leg on the outside of the shin called the anterior muscle compartment, this is an area where muscle is wedged in between the tibia and a strip of tough gristle. When this muscle is worked hard it can’t expand and becomes painful and this muscle is worked hard by toe runners. This is a likely reason for my shin splints pain as opposed to all of the other things I have considered with self diagnosis on the internet. Pushing through the pain barrier with compartment syndrome can lead to gangrene however, so I can’t just ignore this one.

He isn’t wholly convinced that I have any additional bone growth on my left leg despite having a good prod about on my shin. If there is any change in bone density it might mean that I have caused a stress fracture and if that is the case running isn’t for me, I’m not a big guy and shouldn’t be stressing my bones to that extent. I am off to have a few X-Rays just in case.

As predicted my doctor has put a ban on running until I next see him (after the X-Rays have been done) and as long as nothing is thrown up with these X-Rays he is going to talk me through warming up and down exercises that can help, and he even mentioned the physio word. I am allowed, nay encouraged, to get out on the bike though so Sunday Big Run will now be replaced by Sunday Big Ride until I am given the all clear by the Doc.

I am now trying to instigate the Sunday Big Run. I plan on running the big distances every Sunday, being driven to locations at increasingly longer distances from home, and then I run back. (I say plan but I already have other plans for this coming Sunday.)

This weekend saw me start the Sunday Big Run ball rolling with a 10 miler. I got there at about 8:30 in the morning, partly because the F1 was on early and partly because a large bulk of the route was along a pathless B road, so I didn’t what to have to dodge a lot of traffic.

All told I got home in 1 hour and 38 minutes which was about what I expected to complete based on the half marathon time. I have a couple of massive blisters in the arch of my foot have appeared again. I wonder why that part of my foot has suddenly started rubbing? And my shins are a bit achy again.

One concern on the shin front is the bone in my left shin. My left leg is the more troublesome, with more sever shin splint pain and more sever muscle aches. I have noticed over the last couple of weeks that the middle of the shin bone is getting denser than its opposite number on the right. I’m contemplating going off to see the doc but I fear he will 1/ call me a big girls blouse and 2/ will tell me to stop running on it.

when running goes bad

I have been reading on peoples twitters and blogs about having a “bad” run. I’ve not had a bad run yet, I’ve had hard runs, and painful runs, and enjoyable runs. Last night I think I had a bad run.

I chose to do my preferred 4.2mile route around the back lanes I also decided to run with wrist weights on to work my upper body a little bit harder. It took me 45 minutes and was gruelling.

The wrist weights were a surprise load on my CV system and I found it a bit tougher, especially up hill but that wasn’t what made it a bad run. My legs felt like lead, muscle cramps and general all over pain made running a bit grim.

Getting back I found it difficult to warm down, and sleeping was made uncomfortable as I had terrible aches in the back of my legs and today I have very tight leg muscles.

I don’t know why the run went bad. Maybe it’s the weather as it has gone cooler over the last few days. Or maybe it is this trace of a cold that I have, or maybe it was the wrist weights adding to the load on my pegs, or maybe it is just one of those things that runners have to put up with from time to time.

Went for a quarter marathon run last night. 7.1 miles in 1 hour and 2 minutes. Pleased with that sort of pace which is about the 7mph mark. If I could have kept that pace up for another hour (and there was plenty of running left in me by the time I had finished) I would have got my half marathon time under the two hour mark. I did slow towards the end though as several very unpleasant blisters had formed in the arch of my foot. These blisters are a testament to 1000mile socks that I was wearing for the Great North Run but had not got on last night. Must invest in more 1000mile socks.

I have decided to increase the distances that I am running because I have now set my sights on a full marathon at some point in 2010 and I have half a mind on tacking an ultra marathon at some point in the future too.

I gave myself a full week off to recover from the Great North Run and by the end of the week I was starting to really need to do something again. I could almost feel my muscles starting to atrophy while I sat there playing the playstation.

Saturday was a light run with the wife. My old favourite route of 4.2miles took us about 50 minutes which was a slow pace but I didn’t want to push too hard straight after my little rest.

Sunday I got the bike out for the cardio. Went out for an hour and a half and covered about twenty miles. A week after a half marathon and my legs were not back up to full capacity, after about an hour I had burned through the glycogen stores, the last 5 miles home were slow and painful.

Over the weekend I also had a chance to chat with Nigel, my proposed crewmate for the DW, he is finding it hard to keep up with any kind of training regime with his workloads at the moment, and his getting married next year is putting further strains on his time and wallet so he has decided to pull out of any plans to take part in the DW next year. So what to do? Find a replacement? Do the single crew event? Postpone until 2011? I’m not sure at the moment.

I’m also thinking about changing the name and the URL of the blog (be warned that some day soon I might move). When I first started this, the only reason for it being was to chart my preparations to get ready for the Devizes to Westminster canoe race but now it has become more like a fitness diary. I don’t know what to change it to yet but I might even give the page a full makeover.

Great North Swim and Great North Run

My Great North week, really was pretty great. Starting out with the Great North Swim and finishing with the Great North Run.

At the beginning of the week it was the Great North Swim. We were staying in a self catering lodge not far from Windermere to use as a base. All the advice on the day was to not drive and try to park at the event so we decided to walk the 3 miles to Windermere which proved to be a pleasant warm up for the swim.

We were there pretty early, time enough to mill around watching the organisers going through the safety briefings and things. I was in the first wave on the first day and I felt pretty privileged to be the first one out. It seems that most people in the first wave were all new to this outdoor swimming malarkey and after going through into the holding pen we all just stood around nervously, not sure what was going on. A couple of people dipped into the lake to acclimatise but most of us (including me) just nervously waited for the starters gun.

I wish I did have a pre-race dip into the water though because the moment I hit the water my breath was taken away, and for the first quarter of a mile my chest felt tight and I felt like I was going to drown. I didn’t though, and eventually I started to enjoy myself.

I’m a confident swimmer but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than breast stroke. It is my strongest stroke and when I was younger I won several races with it but alas, the front crawl is faster and over the distance people who I thought I might beat thrashed past me. Dr. Hillary Jones (of GMTV fame) was one of those people who went past me at about the half mile mark, I tried to keep with him but I couldn’t bring myself to front crawl.

In the end I finished in 00:41:43. A time I am pretty pleased with. When I was training in the pool I was covering the mile distance in about 45 – 50 minutes. I finished overall 2777th fastest person out of 4581 people who completed the swim over the two days.

I enjoyed the day, and the experience of the whole event was brilliant but the competitive side off me is not happy about finishing in the bottom half of the grid. I have already applied to do it again next year and vowed to have an open water front crawl I am confident with next time.

The Great North Run was at the other end of the week was something awesome, I have never taken part in anything so special. Fifty thousand other people all taking part in the same event was pretty amazing and I felt proud to be there.

Driving early in the morning to park the car at the finish line, my Satnav guided me down the route of the run. It made me really nervous to see the route that we would be running but it did help me visualise what was upcoming, where the water stations where, where the hills where, and most importantly where the finish was. Parking up we bussed back to the start to join thousands of runners and spectators all being whipped up into some kind of running frenzy by the announcer.

As I mentioned in earlier blog posts, I was in the green group at the back which was, (I’m told) almost a kilometre from the starting line, certainly it took me nearly twenty minutes to walk to the start line from the green zone pen after the gun had gone. The green group was not filled with the fastest runners in the world either and once we finally got underway I did get bogged down with slow movers who were not as keen to get to South Shields as I was.

My leg was a constant worry during the build up to this event, and I hadn’t really run on it for two or three weeks prior. The leg ached a bit in the morning so I made sure I warmed up thoroughly and also took the warming up short cut with lashings of Deep Heat slathered all over. The leg muscle tightened up during the first few miles but eventually I forgot about it and was able to do the distance without another twinge.

I was really surprised how many people were badly prepared for the half marathon. All the information provided by the great run people had outlined how hard the event was: Don’t run if you haven’t run any more than 8 miles, keep hydrated, don’t drink booze the night before etc. etc. (I have to be honest I broke many of the rules on being fit to run, and had I not been as stubborn as I am I might have not run this year) but at about the 3 mile mark people were already walking and it wasn’t much long after that there were fallen runners being tended to by paramedics. I remember one man who looked to be of a similar fitness, build and age to me stumbling off the road and into a tree completely delirious with fatigue or heat exhaustion (a pack of paramedics pounced on him so I guess he survived).

The final mile dropped down onto the coast and along the sea front and was lined by so many cheering people it was a real boost, I decided to go for a fast finish. I saw the “800 metres to go” boards and I stepped up a gear, and was running for ages before the 400 metre boards came up. I hadn’t really appreciated that 800 metres was half a mile, I had just got wrapped up with the joy of seeing the first sign that was in metres not miles. I nearly killed myself with that half mile sprint finish.

In the end my time was 02:04:57 which is a time I am happy with. I finished overall 14,244th out of 37,541 finishers. Top half of the grid is much more pleasing.

They also had several timing mats over the course and my times recorded were.

5k 00:28:41
10k 00:58:18
15k 01:28:14

Which means at the first mat I was doing 9.2 minutes per mile (or 6.5mph) second mat I was slowing and doing 9.38 minutes per mile (6.4mph) and by the third mat at 15 kilometres I was doing 9.46 minutes per mile (6.34mph). So much for trying to run negative splits. I am pleased I kept my speed above 6mph though because often during training I would trundle along at 5mph.

The experience was amazing. Going over the Tyne bridge with the sun shining, fifty thousand other people all doing the same thing, and the Red Arrows flying overhead, was one of those moments I won’t forget. It is difficult to sum up my feelings at that moment in words but it was brilliant and something I am going to have to do again.

Two days later and the aches have arrived. Nothing too bad, though it has taken most of the day for the seized muscles to cooperate. I’m going to give myself the rest of the week off and then I am getting back into the training. With a couple of half marathons under my belt it is probably time to set my sights on a full one.