An hour of ‘running’!

Yay!

I’ve signed up for the Coniston 14, but got injured in December and so have been a little bit concerned that I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m keen to do it as I think it’ll be fun, beautiful and a great way to explore a lake I’ve swum twice.

So after slowly getting back into running on the treadmill in the gym I wanted to do two things today: run outside; be out there for at least an hour. I managed both!

I’m still calling it ‘running’ at the moment as, under advise from the physio, I’m interspersing running with a minute or so of walking. At the moment the aim is to do a 5:1 ratio of running and walking.

But today wasn’t about speed or distance, it was about time and getting my legs and my head used to just getting on with it for a bit. I wanted to put the Team Bear mantra of #SufferButNEVERsurrender to the test in running mode. And that’s why I set a goal of an hour (I’ve not done more than 31 minutes on the treadmill so far).

My hour of running, broken down by pace.

You can see from the graph above that the walks got a bit longer towards the end, but actually so did the runs.

Over the next few weeks I will lengthen my long run by 10 minutes per week until I’m up to 2 hours. By then I should be ready for Coniston 14. See you there!

 

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Running Again

After my recent injuries I returned to running for the first time in WEEKS tonight. I took it gently and just did 3 minutes of running and then 1 minute of walking, all done on the treadmill after a gym session. Then when I got home I iced it for a few minutes just to be extra cautious.

But, and I don’t want to tempt fate, but so far, so good and it all feels fine. A few niggles, but no injury like there was before.

The reason that I want to get back into running is that I’ve signed up to a 14 mile run around the perimeter of Coniston and I’m very keen to do it. I love the Coniston swim and so this run sounds great too – although of course it’s going to be tough. What I don’t want to do is be pig-headed about it, set off on the event and then have to pull up half-way round, or possibly even worse continue to be pig-headed, complete it and damage my leg for weeks to come.

I’ll give it a few more sessions like tonight before I commit to it, but even at tonight’s pace it looks like I could do the distance in about 2 and a half hours, so as I’m not chasing glory on this one (or any event) it could be a goer. Wish me luck.

PS – I’m a bit annoyed as I’d thought about a clever / funny title and theme for this post when I was on the treadmill, but I’ve completely forgotten it now 😦

Ah… I’ve missed you

I went for a swim today.

There shouldn’t be anything unusual in that, but there is unfortunately. In fact, until today, I’d not swum since November 24th. Which is, by a very long way, the longest gap I’ve had between swims this year. (I’ve a couple of gaps of up to a week, but they either preceded or followed a specific long swim). I can’t even use the excuse that I was doing other things, as that swim on November 24th was the last exercise I’ve done.

I posted just at the start of this period of inactivity about my illness and injury, and on top of that I’ve had a serious outbreak of ‘can’t-be-arsed-itis’.

But today I went to the pool.

And I swam.

At first a gentle 100m warm-up, then a few gentle 200m sets (I say ‘sets’, I was just swimming up and down, but resting at the end of each 200m). And then to finish I did 500m.

And it felt good.

The water was welcoming and I remembered how to do it. I’d even go as far to say that I enjoyed it – well I must have done, as I’m going again this evening!

Illness and injury

I was supposed to be running a 10k run today, but I’ve picked up an injury. I’ve knackered my leg.

Since the end of the swimming season I’ve done a couple of sprint triathlons – which included a 5k at the end of each – and I’ve also been training up for the 10k. It would seem that my cardiovascular fitness was fine to get me through that, but because I haven’t run for ages my biomechanics just weren’t there. I’m very flat-footed and so that means that my calf muscles need to work overtime to provide extra support to compensate for that. Because I just launched into 5ks and beyond it strained those muscles and ligaments too much.

At the moment, I’ve been told that I need to wear soft heels as much as possible – so no slippers around the house, instead I’m wearing my running shoes. As I’m not wearing them to run in at the moment, that’s fine.

And on a side note, fortunately Andrew was able to take my place on today’s run and acquitted himself excellently.

While I’ve been feeling sorry for myself that I can’t run for a while, I’ve been consoling myself that at least I can still swim – or I could. I’ve picked up an ear infection and I now need to stay out of the pool for a week.

I had an ear infection before and it was very possibly the most painful thing I’ve gone through. For about three days I lived in a cycle of:
– Take the strongest painkillers I could
– Snooze for a couple of hours as they took effect
– Wake up and watch West Wing to distract me as the painkillers wore off
– Repeat

Fortunately this infection isn’t anywhere near as bad. But I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself and the no swimming feels pretty painful 😦