I can hardly keep my eyes open. Lorna was up and we ran today. Slowly and briefly thanks to last night’s film watching, dancing and drinking.
We ran 2k down the A59 and then 2k back. Lorna ran off ahead on the way back, I was very slow because I’d forgotten to take my ventolin and could hardly breathe at anything faster than a snail’s pace.
Still, we’re all alive and tomorrow will hopefully be better.
Today I was just going to walk the kids to school, walk back and claim that as my Juneathon activity, thank you very much. That would be lovely.
No… apparently this is as bad as trying to claim a stroll around Tesco as your activity (which sounds like a legit activity to me). My motivational guru pointed me in the right direction. “Get off your arse and do a proper run”, I was told. And so I did (well, a bit).
Just before lunch, I went out for a quick 3k down to the Beaufort and back again to test how the foot was doing and to try and get used to keeping to a steady, sensible pace unlike yesterday. All went well apart from one point where my headphones cable tried to wrap itself around my neck and strangle me – how it did that I still don’t know, but I had to hoik my phone out the pocket, rearrange everything and carry on; all the while plodding down the street.
When I got home my troubles began. My key wasn’t in my pocket. Instead, my pocket was inside out flapping around my bum. I’d held my phone in my hand after the cable-neck-attack and not noticed the flappy warning sign.
I walked along the A59 looking for my keys – a hopeless pursuit. By that point they were either kicked into a field, crushed under a lorry or in the hands of a scally who is right now trying all the tens of thousands of doors that it might possibly fit.
I walked past where I turned around and on to Alan and Ann’s house to see if they had our spare key. They had looked after the cat and the rats the other week and I was sure they had one.
Alan was just about to head out to some local politics gig (I think) But he took me in, showed me pity and made me a cuppa. We had a catch up, I got the key and Alan very kindly drove me back to my house. Yay! All’s well that ends well, I thought. Went to open the door and the key didn’t fit. Alan had given me the wrong key. I didn’t notice because, hey, it’s the spare key that gets passed around friends and family and I very rarely see it – Jude does most of that useful, practical stuff.
Another brief, hopeless walk along the A59 and it’s time to go and get the children. So decked out in my running kit I jumped on the bike – no helmet (very very very bad) because that’s inside the house, and I’m at the school ten minutes later. Cadged the use of a friend’s phone so that I can contact Jude and ask her to cancel Lily’s piano lesson and then walked back home with the kids.
If you’re wondering, a lot of the walking is because Jude’s car is in the garage where the repair is turning into a complete nightmare. It’s been there for ten days now and I think it’ll be in there for another ten. Jude needed my car today to pick up Aunty Karen who flew in from Australia this afternoon.
We then had an hour to kill, so I played football with the kids and ate ice lollies from the freezer in the garage.
And then, like angels floating in on a cloud to save us, Jude and Karen appeared on the drive – with keys, that worked. Thank god. It was only 4:30, three hours after I’d realised I’d lost the key.
The rest of the day has been lovely. It’s been Jude’s birthday today – a big one – her thirteenth prime number. These things need celebrating and with her sister freshly over from Oz we went out to Pizza Express in our newly obtained courtesy car.
Alls well that finally ends well. Much walking, a bit of cycling and a bit of running today. Runkeeper tells me that it’s 13.3km, but I didn’t put everything in, so it’s something higher than that.
A summary of activities:
* walked to school and back
* ran to the beaufort and back
* walked to Alans
* cycled to the school
* walked back from the school
* played football in the back with the children
Here are the Garmin stats for the run.
Oh, the downside is that my foot hurts again. I’m off to the gym in the morning, but I’ll have to keep an eye on that one.
Plus I’ve just read that this tale of woe apparently inspired Lorna Walker to go out and run today. Goodness knows how the knowledge that one of her friends has been locked out of his house and is scrambling around the streets of Burscough and Ormskirk can be classed as “motivational”. However, it certainly throws a different light on the day’s activities.
Lots done today, this morning was spent supping coffees at Caffe Nero and working through Youth Zone stuff. Some of the coding for the system I’m working on has been done wrong by a colleague and it was slightly disheartening to have to work through that. However, it was good to go through things with Robert and others. I could quite easily adopt the place as my third ‘home’ office (after the kitchen table and Puddletown Pirates).
This afternoon was a whirl of skypes, plans and getting stuff done. While Jude took Lily to go cross-country running.
Inspired by Lily’s venture and perhaps more by the awesome run by “academicontherun” today, I thought I’d give my foot a test on the road to see how it goes. Just a short plod down the long mile (to the Beaufort) and back again.
More skyping this evening meant that it was past 9 when I left the house and after about 2k I had a crunching stitch and was losing breath. Probably as much to do with the pace of about 6 mins per km than having just eaten. So my last km was a bit of a walk and run affair. That pace felt fine for the first couple of km, but is much faster than I’ve run in the past; so was perhaps ill-judged.
Not the most tremendous of runs as a first venture out, but that doesn’t matter, I’m really pleased to have gone out and pleased that my foot feels fine. If it’s ok tomorrow I’ll give it a little further, perhaps at a slower pace.
And the video for Haim, ‘Falling’. Quite fun as a first running song.
Well, the running was very short-lived. I mentioned yesterday that there had been a bit of a pain in my right foot. It was aching through the day and I didn’t think too much of it, I’ve been working while the sun has been out and so the day had been mostly sedentary.
When I went out to the shops yesterday evening I felt a sharp pain in my right foot. So much so that I couldn’t put any weight on it for a few moments. I was stood, helpless, in an aisle at Marks and Spencer; next to the Turkish cherry and vanilla jam, it turned out. There’s always a silver lining.
I’m lucky to have some amazing friends, many of them on facebook. The collected wisdom of runners, doctors and others came to the conclusion that it was something called Plantar fasciitis (PF); the painful inflammation of the plantar fascia, apparently. It’s something that can affect runners, particularly those of us who carry (ahem) a little extra weight.
I’ve been pointed to some stretches on the Arthritis Research Council (ARC) website. I’ve started doing these. Plus I’ll go to see the doctor as soon as I can – partly because the pain isn’t located under my heel but at the side of my foot. However, much of what I’ve read seems to point to PF.
What does this mean for Juneathon? Well, I’m not going to run until I’ve seen the doc. Instead I’ll have to do some non-impact exercise. The idea of going out on a bike doesn’t fill me with excitement, particularly since my cycle helmet was thrown away (mistakenly) a couple of months ago. There is always the gym and I’ll give that a go.
If I’m honest, I was really disappointed last night – I still am a little. I’ve spent the best part of my adult life embracing a sedentary lifestyle and only recently found that I could enjoy exercise, something that was beaten out of me at school (I was the pathetic asthmatic kid who was told to stay inside when everyone else did PE). I’d been really pleased with myself for starting running and finding that it wasn’t that difficult or a problem. I was happy about completing the Manchester 10k and I was looking forward to training for the Birmingham half marathon.
Let’s see how it goes, eh? I’ll blog again later if I get out on the bike.
The other day my gigging buddy, Lorna, sent me a link about Juneathon, an annual challenge to run and blog every day through June. I remember her doing it last year and being impressed with her dedication to the cause. It seemed like an excellent idea – for those people who called themselves ‘runners’, which she was and I certainly was not.
Time rolls on and things have changed; I started so-called ‘running’ at the start of February and last weekend Jude, Lorna and myself ran the Manchester 10k. Now I’m faced with about 20 weeks until the Birmingham half marathon. Juneathon comes at a good time; post 10k I could happily put my feet up, get back to programming and forget about the running. I think I’d get a gold medal for sitting on my arse. Instead the challenge is to get out every day – I like that – and then, working backwards from the half marathon, a 16 week training programme would start at the beginning of July. It all seems to fit together very nicely.
There is the small matter of a trip to the Glastonbury Festival at the end of the month. A week drinking cider, listening to bands and lolloping around in mud. There will be showers where we’re staying. It’s a long story, but I’m not camping within the festival site this year. Consequently running might be possible… but if I’m up until 6am, waving my arms like I just don’t care then running might seem a bit ambitious. Let’s see how it goes.
My plan was to run 30 minutes, down the A59 to Burscough for 15 minutes and then back again. At my pace, it would be somewhere around 4k – slow, I know but give me a break, I had 44 years of mastering the art of sitting down. It would be a gentle re-introduction after taking five days off after the Manchester 10k.
It felt like the start of a new chapter, removing the timer tag strings from my running shoes marking the end of that challenge and stepping out into a bright sunny morning to start a new one. If I started running before 7am, it would feel amazing (even if it *was* 6:58). That didn’t quite happen. My fancy running watch couldn’t get a satellite connection and so I found myself at the end of the drive, wrist pointing towards the skies, hoping that it would lock in to the GPS. So I just missed my target of starting before 7.
The run was unremarkable. My average pace was average – 7 minutes 24 per km, which is about right, perhaps a bit slow for me these days. For the first 10 minutes, I was certain that I was running as if I were doing a chicken-dance, hobbling around and feeling stiff as anything despite stretching and doing a (little) warm up beforehand. At various points, my right foot foot, knees and thighs gave me a bit of gyp, but each passed after a couple of minutes. Nothing to be alarmed about.
At one point, a pick up truck mounted the pavement just in front of me, and I thought that the driver was trying to take me out. Instead, it appeared that he was delivering his girlfriend back home, early morning. His mind must have been on other things.
The 30 minute plan didn’t work out. Once I’d run 15 minutes I felt bad about not running 5k, so I kept going to Platts Lane and turned around.
So at least I started. More tomorrow. Juneathon doesn’t run and blog itself, you know.
