running – Doing A Bit Of Running

Big Girl’s Blouse

“You’re bloody useless you know”

“Here you are staggering around – you’re thinking of giving up aren’t you? Your time is going to be dismal again. You’re getting nowhere fast”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get moving you big girl’s blouse”

“Hang on, what’s all this girl’s blouse blithering? That’s just a great big bunch of nonsense. What you got against blouses anyway?”

“Never mind that. What’s with giving yourself all that shit? Since when has that ever motivated anyone?”

“Well, it’s the sort of thing that football coaches and P.E. teachers used to yell at me when I was at school.”

“And did it motivate you?”

“Well, it did, after a fashion. It was not really because of what they were saying, but more that I knew they were disappointed and I wanted them to be pleased with me, and possibly even proud to have me in their team.

Of course, if I made several mistakes and found myself exposed to a porcupine of such barbs then I would retreat as far as possible and accidently find myself in positions on the field where the ball was unlikely to come. I would inch through the rest of the match in a fuddle of despair, knowing that I was too useless to help, so should just keep myself well away from everything.

However, the barrage of abuse was useful, in short bursts.”

“OK, so mostly toxic but occasionally it prompted your desire to please people and the side effect of that was that you were motivated. Now answer me this – if you were helping another runner to train, would you tell them that they were useless and call them a ‘big girl’s blouse.”

“Well, no, obviously not. That would be horrible.”

“Then why on earth would you do it to yourself?”

So with a total of 3 different voices in my head it was getting really quite crowded in there.

I have been getting quite frustrated with myself. I am right back to the start of my running journey again and finding it incredibly difficult. Before the injuries I could run fairly long distances and had been whittling down my 5 and 10k times too. Now the furthest I can run is 5K and I seem to be stuck at around 33 minutes. It is extremely annoying.

However, yelling abuse at myself inside my head probably isn’t going to help.

I need to make a small achievable plan for now. I need to be not too disappointed if I don’t achieve it and celebrate my success if I do achieve or surpass it.

I remember when I first started my running journey some years ago that getting under 30 minutes for 5K felt like a really big deal. Therefore I will set myself a target to get under 30 minutes for the return of Parkrun on the 5th of June.

That will still be hard work but I reckon as long as I keep at it then it is achievable.

BTW, isn’t it brilliant news that Parkrun is coming back. I’m so looking forward to it. Also for anyone who wants to listen to a beautiful tender moment from the Parkrun podcast, ‘Free, Weekly, Timed’ then tune in to the 26th February 2021 show at 20.46 when Vassos Alexander asks Tom Williams where he is going to be when Parkrun restarts and will he have a tear in his eye. Tom chokes up and cannot speak for a long long time. It was lovely to hear such passion and I’m grateful that the podcast team carried on recording and left that pause in there. It was such a sweet moment.

I look forward to seeing everyone again at Parkrun on 5th June.

Stepping On To The Same Path Twice

Heraclitis said “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

For the path will never be quite the same and when you return to it you will be changed.

In a similar vein, history is said to not exactly repeat itself but it does often rhyme and my running life is throwing rhymes at me that are awfully familiar.

Looking back at one of the first entries in this blog I see a write up of my first parkrun and it resonates all too closely with my current sorry attempts to regain my running fitness.

I set off and feel all creaky, fat and unfit.

It eases a little and I start to feel slightly better after about a half kilometre.

I reach 1 kilometre and am suddenly fighting for oxygen. The gasping must be quite alarming for passers-by and it is probably only their desire to not get involved that stops them bundling me into their car and taking me to hospital.

I push through, telling myself that I’ve been here before and it gets better, and thankfully it does. Breathing eases off and at about 2.5 kilometres I feel great.

Then everything starts to become grim. I now feel as if I am running uphill into a strong wind. Muscles are complaining and my brain is telling me that I should stop, so as not to injure myself.

I mentally check through all the moving parts. There are no sharp pains, nothing that would indicate that I am heading for imminent self destruct.

I conclude that the brain is being a tad overly dramatic and that it should jolly well tone it down a bit.

And this is maybe the difference – the path back to fitness is very similar to the one I trod just a few years ago when I first started to run. The difference this time is that I have experienced it before and so can bring that experience to bear on the process. The path may be the same but the man has changed.

This all sounds ever so level headed and balanced and all that but it isn’t doing me much good as regards progress. My 5k times now are about the same as they were when I first ran parkrun and 10k, half marathons, marathons and 100k runs look to be all just crazy talk to me now.

Ah well

Baby steps, baby steps…

Winter Training Starts Here

I’ve been musing, pondering and wondering about doing a really epic run.

Take a look at this blurb from the Race To The Stones website:

“Follow the footsteps of Vikings, Romans, dragons and kings. Journey from the Chilterns to the mystical North Wessex Downs past mighty iron age forts, ancient monuments and through some of Britain’s most stunning landscapes. A 5000 year trek back in time.”

It sounds amazing doesn’t it?

The full race is 100km long along the Ridgeway, the oldest trackway in Britain. That’s the one that I’d really like to do but possibly I should scale it back a bit. There is an option to just do the part 2 section of the course so should I? Could I? Many times I began the sign up process only to quit at the final pay now moment. Once I sign up I am also committing to a long hard winter of training in the wind, the rain and the snow.

Do I really want to do that to myself?

I finally decided that I didn’t want to do that to myself but I would just bloody well have to if I wanted to make this fantasy a reality. I want this experience and the pain of getting there will be part of what makes it so extraordinary. My plan is to start with the 50k and if I manage to stagger over the finish line then maybe, just maybe, 100k might seem like something I could do.

However, before the race must come the long hard months of training so I’d better put on my running gear and get out there and put in the miles.

But it’s raining.

Get out there you wuss.

And so I did.

I’ve slackened off a little recently and put on a good deal of weight. I am over a stone heavier than when I ran the London Marathon and I was no waif back then. Thinking about this (because I do make a habit of torturing myself) I imagined putting 7 bags of sugar into a bag and wearing it around my waist. It seems a ridiculous thing to have done to oneself but I really do enjoy a nice curry and it seems I have had several.
I have still been doing regular weekend runs and decided that today it would be a good idea to increase my Sunday run from the usual 10k up to around 13 or so. That would seem to be a sensible increase for the long run.

Running into the village of Histon the persistent rain became a little less persistent and I started to feel substantially more relaxed and happy. It was one of those special moments when you realise that this is going to be a good run.

A goose on the green at Histon was unimpressed with my efforts and fronted up to me like a street thug with a flicknife. I bravely turned away and ran across the road, and the goose, satisfied with its thuggery, waddled off to have a good bragging session with the rest of the goose gang.

I continued through the village to the roadway that leads on toward the busway. There was someone up ahead walking and so I moved out to the edge of the path ready to overtake. I looked up some time later and she was still quite a long way in front of me. How snail-like must be my pace if I am taking such an age to pass by. Are there snails watching from the edge of the path putting bets on whether they could take me in a 100 yard dash? I do eventually pass her and try to convince myself that actually she was walking really quickly.

At the far edge of Histon before I reached the busway I spotted openings out into a field. Aha thinks I. Race to the Stones is going to have lots of uneven surfaces. Let’s try some. It takes rather more concentration running on this kind of terrain as you leap over tree roots and splash through puddles but it is more interesting than the constant plod along the pavement. I realise that I am also going to have to find some hills during my training. As I live on the edge of the Fens this might be somewhat challenging.

Paths lead on to paths but eventually I am drawn inexorably toward the busway which cuts right through this landscape and provides an extremely useful connection between the villages. I hop on to it and and am soon roaming around in far flung exotic locations such as Westwick and Oakington. Wild times indeed.

I realise that I am now quite some distance from home and am going to exceed my mileage or kilometreage target for the morning. As I haven’t brought any nutrition with me then maybe this might become a problem. Everything feels fine for now but I have experienced a nutrition crash previously and it wasn’t pretty. Turning back for home I encounter a shop in Histon. I don’t really know what the best thing to buy is to maintain these mysterious electrolytes that the running fraternity bang on about but I seem to remember a doctor insisting that drinking Lucozade and gels was just the thing when I was suffering at the end of the London Marathon. Grabbing a lucozade I topped up with whatever it might contain (from the taste I would guess that it’s mostly sugar). I don’t know whether this helped but I got home after 18 kilometres and felt absolutely fine.

The journey has begun…

Save The Rhino – I am of course doing this Race To The Stones entirely for my own selfish reasons but I would also love it to be of benefit to others, so I’d be delighted if you could donate money for Save The Rhino International at my JustGiving page here:

Hunstanton, Beat The Tide

Richard had mentioned this one and I was immediately intrigued.

It’s in Hunstanton which is such a sweet little seaside town.
It’s in Hunstanton and therefore only an hour and a quarter away from me by car.
It’s running on sand
It’s running on sand
It’s running on sand – that’s so cool.

This event was run by the Stroke Association and hopefully raised a nice chunk of change for the cause. Entry fee was 20 pounds for 10k run and 5 pounds for the 5k option. I went for the 10 and my wife Carrie entered for the 5k.

We stretched out in one line and then all surged forward trying to come to terms with this strange substance underfoot. It’s not like soil and it’s not like mud. It is wet sand rippled with ridges that seem to dig into the soles of your running shoe. We were moving right and left trying to find tracks with fewer ridges and then we hit an altogether new and exciting texture which might be best described as The Mighty Gloop. Every step sank into the sand and the hole you were sinking into seemed to be trying to claw the shoes from your feet. We began to think longingly of those happier times when we had nothing to worry about other than the slight discomfort of rippling sand. The runners ploughed onwards through the mire, as they forged a furrow through the sludgy sand. We spied the turn around point of 2.5k where we would circle the flag and run back to where we had begun. Here the ground underfoot became so wet that we were actually halted in our stride. Momentum was no longer possible and we all slowed to a stride reminiscent a dazed orangutan with two wooden legs, one being shorter than the other. We somehow succeeded in circling the flag and firing back along the trail. This time however the route had fired us out on to a rocky shingle section of the beach. Ordinarily we might have met this uneven surface with some trepidation but now it seemed like the most delightful running track in the universe. We were making progress once more.

It seemed to take a long time to get back to the start as the sand continued to try and make off with my shoes. Many were the fellow runners who lost their footwear that day.

We circled the start flag and set off once more. The 5k runners were coming in to finish and looking mighty relieved about it. Carrie was one of those and we high fived as we passed by.

I was feeling a little better by now. I knew all that lay ahead of me (so I thought) and felt that I could cope with it. It got even better when I realised that they had re-routed us at the far end of the course so that we avoided the silliest section. There were surprises still in store. I had thought the ‘beat the tide’ title to have been used for dramatic affect. Imagine my surprise when I was suddenly confronted with a fairly deep section of water. Beat the tide was far more literal than I had expected.

Overall it was a terrific experience. It was a slow run but a tough one. It was full of excitement, adventure and strangeness but it all made for a fun time.

The scenery was delightful, the weather was gorgeous and we were able to cool off with a swim in the sea afterwards.

I may go back next year. I wonder if it would be easier attempting this one barefoot.

Dewsbury Parkrun

Well, it’s Christmas again and we are doing the tour of mothers.

First mum stop this year is my mum, in Leeds for Christmas and, of course I am looking to do a bit of parkrun tourism while I’m here. This is one that I haven’t done before. It’s in a place called Dewsbury which is in between Leeds and Huddersfield. It is in a park and, as with everything else in this area, it is on a hill.

The wind has been making a nuisance of itself and has blown debris all over the paths on which we intended to run. One of the pieces of debris is a tree and the decision is taken that it is probably a bit too big to just brush off to the side of the path. The parkrun volunteers take the decision to use emergency course which involves going around the small loop section a mighty six times. Our race director tries to explain this and gets into a frightful tangle when she adds extra detail to try and make it easier to understand. You will pass this monument 6 times she says. Ahem say the assembled masses. Seeing as the finish line is just back there won’t it be 5 times. Oh yes, well erm, yes ignore everything I’ve just said.

Unfortunately my wife has taken the six times bit of data and possibly hasn’t heard the correction (you are cheating here Jim – you are speaking from the future so you know that is what happened – well yes – and so you shouldn’t go around sounding all superior saying this or that probably happened when you’ve already been to the future and so know full well what happened – harumph, my blog, my rules, if I want to pretend omniscience then I shall).

Off we go around the monument and down the hill. I’m feeling great and really enjoying it.
The fast folk have already vanished around the bend at the bottom of the hill. I am skipping along happily until I reach the bottom of the hill and have to climb upwards again. It is a long slow hill but I see the finish line for the first time and this gives me cheer until I remember that it I must pass here another 5 times, or is it 6 or 4 or…

I pass Carrie at the top of the hill near the monument. She is wearing antlers and so fairly easy to spot. She hold up one finger doing her Sesame Street impression of the Count saying “one lap, ah ah ah”
Next time around the leaders have already caught me up. Gosh that’s a bit demoralising thinks I. Carrie is waiting for me again, “two laps, ah ah ah”. Around and around we go. I must have slowed down as people are passing me. There are a wide variety of costumes. Santas, reindeer and all kinds of Christmassy things.

“Three laps ah ah ah”.

“Four laps ah ah ah”

The leaders are passing me again on their way to the finish line. One goes speeding by and I hear a voice shout, “get yourself moving, we’re catching you.” The leader grins and steps up a gear.

“Five laps ah ah ah.”

I shout back to Carrie to say that I will see her at the finish line next time around. I look back as I run down the hill and she hasn’t moved at all. I wonder whether she didn’t hear me or didn’t believe me.

A chap looks behind and sees me approaching. “Go one he says, lap me now while you’ve got the chance.” I do as he says and do manage to pick up my pace a little toward the end. My time is still much slower than I expected but I reached the end injury free so am happy with that. I am handed a tag as I finish and then there is a long long windey funnel. This seems most peculiar until I realise that they are doing scanning at the end of the funnel. This makes absolute sense now as it means that there is plenty of room for the people to come through the finish line and then queue for scanning.

I am pounced on after the scanning and offered chocolates. I think if anyone is going to pounce on me then it is favourable if the aim of this manoeuvre is to offer me chocolates.

Carrie catches up with me and admits that there was a bit of confusion as regards 5 or 6 times around the monument.

It was a fun parkrun. It was fairly small (in terms of numbers, there were 119 people there on 25th December) and a very strange course going around and around so many times. I would like to try it again when they do the regular route.

Well done to Joe Sagar who finished more than a minute in front of anyone else and also many thanks to all the volunteers for putting on this extra Christmas Day parkrun.

From Parkrun To London Marathon

The Book of my London Marathon run for Save The Rhino

Hurrah, it is finally done.

For all those of you who have a London Marathon place this year, I have just the book for you. I ran the marathon this year to raise money for Save The Rhino and found it bloody difficult but a tremendous experience. I’ve crunched all the fun and frivolity of the months of blood, sweat and tears and then the slog around London into a bright and breezy ebook called ‘From Parkrun To London Marathon’. Buy it on Amazon UK, Amazon USA and all those other Amazons all over the world . They will take their cut from the sales but every penny they hand over to me will be donated directly to Save The Rhino.

I’ve put my various stories together into a narrative that tells the tale from when I started running to my decision to run the London Marathon for Save the Rhino. I’ve then continued on to talk about raising money for the charity and extending my distance so I had some chance of reaching the finish of the London Marathon and claiming my medal.

The bulk of the book covers my experience on the day as I dragged my tired and unfit body around the streets of London. Trust me, it’s a lot more fun than it sounds from the description there.

There are lots of giggles along the way and hopefully some insights that will help people that are thinking of taking on the challenge themselves.

The paperback version is now available and the links above will lead you to the ebook and paperback versions of the book. Please buy as many copies as you can afford and disseminate them widely. Hopefully they will inspire other people to run the London Marathon and possibly even help push them toward running for Save The Rhino.

Fundraising

Remember all money I receive from sales of this book will go directly to Save The Rhino

Grantchester

Grantchester is just a ridiculously beautiful little village. If you take the phrase ‘picture postcard village’ and then feed that description into an amplifier and crank it up to 11, then you’re somewhere near being able to give an impression of what it feels like to be wandering through Grantchester. Driving through the village prior to the run I bask in the glow of village loveliness arraying itself neatly alongside the winding lanes. I glance to the right and see the church grounds all covered in snow.

fake snow pic — Fake snow at the church in Grantchester

Hang On!

This is October, it’s about 12 degrees Celsius, there shouldn’t be snow.

Maybe it wasn’t snow. Could it have been a huge amount of some kind of white blossom? My mind is zipping back and forth, performing somersaults and triple back flips as it struggles to comprehend what it’s just witnessed. Fortunately moments later we see a large studio lighting truck and I realise that the church has probably been decorated for the TV series, Grantchester.

Phew!

We park up and all gather in a large field. There is a large inflatable that says start on one side and finish on the other. My mighty brain reaches the conclusion that this may be where we begin the run.

The ankle injury is still a long way from being healed so I’m not expecting a good time today. I began near the back of the pack aiming to finish in around 63 minutes. I often start these races near the back and I’m not entirely sure this is the right thing to do. I always spend the first few kilometres jammed in among the masses. I feel that I should be moving on but there’s nowhere to go until the field starts to thin out a little. This sounds like I should be starting further forward but then there is the possibility that I may set off too fast and then have nothing left in the tank for the finish. Alternatively am I being too careful and not really putting in as much effort as I could do?

Eventually a few gaps appear and I am able to start passing people. We cross the M11 and start meandering around across fields, through clumps of trees and then eventually back over the M11 several kilometres later. It is at around the 8 kilometre marker that I encounter a Mr motivation type guy. He is running just in front of a woman that I assumed was his partner. He was holding his hand out at around thigh height while looking back at her and making encouraging type noises. This looked such an odd thing to do that I hung back a little so that I could watch. What was she supposed to do with this hand that he was waving in front of her. It was a good kicking height. I wonder if she was tempted. “C’mon”, he was saying, “you can do this”. Over and over again he exhorted her to run a little faster, to push, to work to try harder etc etc. Surprisingly I never heard her swear at him or even try to kick that hand that he was waving in front of her. Eventually I decided to pass them and this seemed to turn up the dial on his motivational outbursts. “Look, you’re being passed”, he said. “He’s going right past you. You’ve really dropped off the pace. You’ve got to pick it up if you’re going to get in under an hour.” Still she said not a word but I think she started to run very slightly slower. Either his motivation was breaking her spirit or this was her form of rebellion. I left them behind but could still hear him shouting about how slow she was going long after I had reached the edge of the field and was heading toward the 9K marker.

I speeded up a little after 9K and was surprised that I still seemed to have plenty of energy. Maybe that answers the question I asked earlier. Possibly I am being too conservative and should try to push myself more from the start. I sprinted for the finish inflatable and crossed in a time of 57:51. Much faster than I had expected but possibly I could have finished quicker than that.

I wonder if the motivation couple managed to get to the end in less than an hour. Maybe if she looked like she was going to finish under the hour, she would have stopped and walked just to irritate him. I suspect motivation guy would have exploded in a mushroom cloud of anger and frustration if she had finished in 61 minutes. Twould have been quite a sight.

I was too busy queuing up for bacon sandwich and coffee to see who came in after me. I much approve of races providing bacon and coffee. I have far too many running t shirts now. I would much prefer bacon.

The medal looks quite classy. It has a blue background with a picture of a clock with the hands at 10 to 3. This is in homage to the poet Rupert Brooke who lived at the Old Vicarage in Grantchester and wrote a poem called ‘The Old Vicarage’ which ends with the words:

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

You’re Going To Stick WHAT into my ankle?

Needles, she said. I’m going to stick some needles into your leg. What foul quackery is this thought I. My ankle hurts and she wants to hurt it some more by sticking a bunch of needles into it.

I lay down on the bench and put my head through the hole. I’ve always hated needles. Dentistry has poisoned my mind against such barbaric instruments. However, the physio seems to know what she’s doing, so I steel myself to whatever is to come. She assures me that it won’t hurt but I squeal pathetically every time she introduces a new needle. She assures me that the latest one hasn’t yet pierced the skin. “That’s just the tube” she says. I am baffled. That really hurt. I would be rubbish at tattoos. She goes into the next room to get something and I look around at my ankle. There are several small spikes sticking out of it. It looks extremely alarming. I look away and she returns to remove the needles and massage the tendon. Surprisingly it seems that she can now touch that achilles tendon without me squealing and leaping into the air. The needles thing seems to have eased the pain a little. I suspect the relief is only temporary but it feels good nevertheless. Apparently its purpose is to increase blood flow into the tendon. These tendon thingies don’t get so much blood and it seems that if you’re trying to fix them then blood is just the thing that their little tendon selves desperately need.

I’ve been seeing a physiotherapist for a few months now. It started with my hamstring problems just before the London Marathon. Then there was a debilitating knee problem after the marathon and now I have achilles tendon pains. It seems that I am receiving a crash course in runners injuries.

The knee pains were absolutely dreadful. It was they that put paid to my Edinburgh Marathon at mile 16. Michelle (the physio) explained to me that it was an imbalance in the muscles that had pulled the knee out of alignment. This caused the knee to scrape on things it shouldn’t be scraping on and therefore inflicted loadsa pain. She is very realistic and realises that runners are ridiculously stupid creatures and will still attempt to run whatever the injury. She therefore taped up the leg to try hold the muscles in place and stop any more inflammation. Unfortunately this doesn’t last long as the tape tends to work loose after a few days. I am, however, learning (albeit very slowly) that I really should cut back on the running and take up other forms of exercise until my injuries heal. Even when they have healed then it seems to make sense to look after the other muscles that work together with the leg muscles. She is trying to talk me into Pilates classes but I’m not overly attracted by the idea. I am however doing the exercises she has given me to pull that knee back into place. There are bum exercises and some more to strengthen the inside of my knee and these exercises seem to have worked. I have had no more pain from that knee. I have had pain from my achilles tendon though.

It’s an overuse injury she says. My heart sinks when I hear this.I know that the only real answer to an overuse injury is to stop using it. I take a look on the Internet and everywhere I see the answer, it’s an overuse injury.

Bugger!

The physio has me standing on steps and pushing my heels down over the edge. I have to do 30 of these quite slowly every day. I also have to do calf stretches, ice the tendon, heat the tendon and then still maintain all those knee exercises. This fixing my legs business is becoming a full time activity. I am also under strict instructions to attend the gym, do some swimming and lots of bicycle rides. Frankly all I want to do is the thing that I enjoy; just to run. I must be patient though. My time will come once this tendon is mended.

Bury St Edmunds Parkrun

I love doing a bit of parkrun tourism. It is fascinating going to different places to see how they do their parkruns and to experience so many of the beautiful places in which these runs take place.

My home parkrun in Cambridge was taking a short break for a couple of weeks so that Milton Country Park could do some work on the paths. Richard and I discussed the alternatives and decided to go slightly further afield to try out one that we’d never been to before.

The Bury St Edmunds parkrun is held in a beautiful park full of fine mature trees and splendidly springy grass to run upon.

The run has a wide start so that no one is far from the start line even with the 259 runners there were today. We set off like a charging barbarian horde going uphill across the grass. There is much shuffling for position but as we turn the corner to run back downhill, everyone is beginning to spread out a little.

We curved around to the right keeping the trees on our right hand side and then back down another slope eventually arriving at a large clump of trees and a narrow path through the middle. This is very welcome for the shade the leaf cover gives us from the sun but it is a bit of a bottleneck and we must tread carefully to avoid the many tree roots strewn across our path. Having survived the deadly obstacles we emerged back into the sun to skirt around the enclosed football courts and then up the hill back to the start so that we can begin our second lap.

I’m hurting quite a bit now from the ankle injury and reckon that I’m beginning to slow a little. I huff and puff a little up the hill. Richard is running at the side of me and I reckon he’s a little bit alarmed by the noises I’m making. He suggests that maybe I could slow down if I wish. We turn to go down the hill and my breathing eases a little but as we turn right I’m hurting again and I can tell that my speed has dropped,, as people are beginning to go past. I’m trying to ignore the pain from my ankle and just keep my legs turning over. It’s damn hot and sweat is running into my eyes causing them to sting. The trees are a welcome relief but as we run through this section Richard trips on a tree root and goes down onto the floor. Fortunately he manages to put his hands out and roll so doesn’t get hurt too badly. He gets up and we carry on.

We burst out from the trees again and curve around the fenced football pitches. I put on an extra bit of speed up the hill and am incredibly relieved to see the finish funnel this time and take my token.

This was a lovely course and it must be delightful to see how it changes with the seasons. I should imagine parts of it become fantastically muddy during the winter months. Of course that kind of weather was a long way away today and both Richard and I suffered from the heat and the humidity of that glorious summer Saturday morning. We grabbed a couple of cold drinks from the shop and made our way back to the car. We both really enjoyed our visit to Bury St Edmunds parkun and thank all the volunteers for making it happen and helping to give us such a fine running experience.

I got a time of 27:03 which wasn’t amazing but I was reasonably happy with it.

Run to Girton to play on the fitness equipment there

I really had almost no idea where I was going or how long I was going out for but just wanted to get outside and do some running.

It’s been quite a while since my knee gave way at mile sixteen on the Edinburgh Marathon. I have been resting and then attempting to build up my running nice and slow. This has, of course been massively frustrating and I have managed to acquire a whole new injury on my right ankle that I shall ask the physio about on Monday.

The physio (Michelle from Vinery Studios here in Cambridge) gave me a whole bunch of exercises to try and build up my glutes (bum muscles) and the muscles that run by the inside of my knee. They are designed to strengthen those muscles and that should pull my kneecap back to where it should be and it will stop becoming inflamed when I run. It seems to be working and I am tentatively running a little bit further every week. With this in mind I felt it might be time to attempt a Sunday long run. I was however quite nervous about it. Will it be too much, too soon? Are my legs ready for it? I decided that I would aim to go over 10 kilometres but not too far over. I’ll run up to Histon and see how I’m feeling then.

Through Histon I ran and was feeling fine although very hot. A little bit of water in my mouth and more tipped over my head. Very nice. I probably should have put some sun screen on. I have a small bald patch on the top of my head on which the sun tends to burn with a ferocious intensity. The heat burrows into my brain and I can get all groggy and wobbly with it. No sir, I haven’t touched a drop. It was the sun wot done it, honest.

I ran through Histon and found myself on a path leading down to the busway. On the other side of the busway was a path going to Girton. That’s decided it for me then, I thought. I shall go to Girton and play on the fitness equipment.

Across the fields I ran and emerged on to a football pitch in Girton. All around the edge of the field were various pieces of equipment. I tried them all, looked mighty foolish and failed mightily with any that required even a modicum of arm strength.

exercise equipment — poles for leaping over or running inbetween

exercise euipment — Parallel bars, ouch aching arms

So, that was a lot of fun and I realise I do need to do some more varied exercise. Just running is great but a muscle imbalance such as the one that pulled my kneecap out of alignment is one I very much want to avoid in the future. I ran back and did just over 17 kilometres altogether. I stopped off at the Sycamores recreation ground in Milton Village on the way back and quickly did a few reps on each machine.

So, 17 kilometres seems fine. Hopefully I can push back up to half marathon distance and then eventually back up to Marathon distance. To do that I will have to try and stay uninjured for as long as possible.