Training Log Archive: BrandNewMe

Down to judo with the kids. It would have been back again too had Laurence not dropped his bike down the stairs at the judo place and broke it in a rather unfixable way, so we had to call ray for a lift back in the van. Still not found my garmin. Oh well. Calf ok. Slight feeling of there being a problem, but not much. I think I can start cranking up the volume, as long as I keep it flat and on roads.

Jog up to Lucy's dancing, through pollock with three kids all on scooters. Still taped up. Noticable but not painful.

V busy day

Harlan loop from work. 5:35 for the hill, but coughing my guts up!

Stopped cycle for 2 x 5min jog with 1 min ninga walking. Tender, but managed to keep an even, flat foot plant at all times so no further damage.

:-(

:-(((. Fuck training.

Physio. I managed not to embarass us both by crying. Instead I sought to cheer myself up, and shake myself out if my ridiculously self-pitying blues by asking about nasty injuries he has seen. He's a rugby physio, and he was comforting someone who had a foot that had done a 180 and both of them knew that his career was over as he was so broken wouldn't get another contract. So the rugby player asked for a fag, and lay by the pitch smoking. Maybe I should just take up smoking instead.

C • Love this 1

Bonskeid. W21e.

Broken. Broken at the start, broken at the finish. No more being broken. I've been broken for more than a year now, and it is no fun at all. No more orienteering for me.

C • No more orienteering 8

Limping to the start.

Jok chasing sprint. Calf went on the way to 7, dropped out soon after when it became apparent that I couldn't run the rest of the he race at any pace at all, and certainly wouldn't be able to do the chase. V disheartening. I need to quit this sport. It is getting me down.

Run to the start. Tried to find somewhere to do my exercises. Failed. No pain here.

No exercises. Birthday treat (or birthday cocktails to blame).

Still ill. No lovely Craig aBarnes for me tonight. :-( Hopefully orienteering tomorrow.

Still off-work ill. Temp 37.6. They say you shouldn't go supermarket shopping when you are hungry, as you just buy junk. Well you shouldn't go when you are feeling feverish either, as you just buy lots of ice cream and ice lollies.

It's not looking good for the weekend really. The important question is how well do I have to be to run around Craig A'Barnes in the dark and beat Nick?

Ill. Off-work ill. Lying-in-bed ill. Watching-back-episodes-of-midsomer-murders ill. Not quite watching-homes-under-the-hammer ill, but close. Temp 37.2.

Exercises, while watching Hot Fuzz, my fave film ever.

Ill, ill, ill, so spending the afternoon reading the paper, eating peanut m&ms and doing this:

http://www.clok.routegadget.co.uk/gadget/rg2/#112&...

I hassled Hev into doing it too, despite her claiming to be too 'master maps' to know how it works.

and the urban:

http://www.clok.routegadget.co.uk/gadget/rg2/#113

I wasn't happy with my mid section to 6, but hey ho.

Got a new toy - digital thermometer. I am trying to work out when I am too ill to run. When I get ill with my ctd illness the most measurable symptom is feverishness. So I am seeing if my temperature changes too. 37.5 average today. I'll see if I can find out what normal is for me over the coming weeks.

Physio today. Extra exercises. More tape. Interesting chat. All good.

Northern champs

Body and spirit broken, and that was before I even started. Lesson - know when not to bother running.

And the long version. Head off from the start, exhausted already. Down a ride, which is v deep in mud and veg and stuff. Pass number 4 which is ok, then blunder in a number 1 direction not really caring. Stuff it up predictably. Then stop short on 2. I am so pants. 3 and 4 was ok, then take a roundabout track route to 5 as the forest is so shit (v steep, v muddy).

6, 7 and 8 pass in a tired blur. 9 was an ok route but fluffed the end by a fair bit, and I was feeling quite shit. Bex's dad burned me off on a track easily. By 10 i had Kirstin which was nice as it kept me going (note: but looking at the splits I slowed once I was with her. I need to learn not to sit back and relax). No real misses on the rest, but so so tired. I need to work out when I can and when I can't run when I am ill. Today I couldn't.

I think I have been to this forest before and didn't like it then.

2nd. Hev beat me. Quite a few retirals. I'm not surprised. It was so muddy.

Recovered with pie and mash in the Whitby pie and mash cafe after. Felt much better.

Got up early, drove to Scarborough, had a mooch. The rest of the family really wanted to stop at a cafe. We are tight for time for the orienteering already, but I don't want to be a spoil sport. I try not to stress. We get to an industrial estate at 11:05 to get bussed to the event. My start is 11:59. The car parking people thought no one else was coming so there were no buses. One of the car parking guys was going to drive, but then he didn't want to take the kids without car seats. Lots of faffing, and we eventually drove the bus route in our van, following him in his car. Get to the bus drop off, absolutely nowhere to park. Tit around for a bit. Marshalls not coming up with any solutions. In the end I have to head off, leaving Ray and the kids doing god knows what but the kids missing their runs for sure. Peg it 2k to assembly with my bag. My calf hurts from the first step, and I have been burning up with fever all morning (you were burning up yesterday and did ok so you'll probate be ok Ray told me). Get to assembly, drop the bag, then sprint the 800m to the start. Get there with 1 min spare, so head to find a bush, missing the first minute of the -4. Someone gives me a bib, I pin it on, then do my laces, then do my hair, get descriptions - oh shit it is 8k and 450m - 10 secs to take a deep breath and try to get some composure, then go.

One for Cat:

Laurence: is 'cock' a rude word mum?
Me: yup, why?
Laurence: cause this club has called itself 'cok'
Me: there's an 'l' there somewhere Laurence. Maybe they need to redesign their logo.

C • Cleveland problems 1

Whitby sprint race.

This was fun. I was feeling rough - glands up, cough, fever, aches blah, blah, blah. Ran in my coat as it was really foul weather. I ran ok. My sort of sprint. I slowed a bit when I caught Hev a minute at the end, cause I was feeling a bit heart-attacky up the hill, and she gave me grief when she came back past me to the 2nd last one. I thought it was a good sprint, and the kids course (I did straight after) was excellent.

No calf pain at all - total result!!! Did Stephen's. exercises after, and I still have his strapping on.

I won. I think the others must have been taking it easy.

Lame excuse for a warm up.

We got to Whitby. It is very wet indeed, and I feel v shite indeed. Hmmm. I might suggest we go home. What to do with kids in Whitby on a wet day - Cat????

It gets better. I have forgotten the duvet. All my clothes on, under my duvet jacket. It'll be like the OMM Ray tells me. That's why I don't do the OMM.

C • Whitby 6

Feeling a bit better today. Back to work.

Good to see Stephen Mutch at Space physios again. I'd forgotten quite how good he is. Lots to work on.

Another day of vile weather here in Edinburgh. Drizzle and a nasty cold wind. At least I didn't see a rat on the canal today, like I did yesterday. It was so horrible!!!

My calf felt much better - that's cause of two things:

1. I actually made a physio appointment for Thursday, so by the time I get there it will have stopped hurting and the physio will be unable to give me a diagnosis.

2. I made the sensible decision to pull out of Brown Clee (lots of reasons).

I would have gone running but I had fake flu and felt shocking all day.

Up at 4 cause my sore legs woke me, and were so sore I couldn't get back to sleep. Tired today. Physio booked for Thursday.

I like the orienteering 'race' activity type. I am not sure I'd call what I was doing racing, but just surviving. The course was pretty simple, due to the terrain. Which just made me sloppy, doing a 90 degree error out of 10 for lots of bonus 'impenetrable' forest. Then started to lose heart a bit when we came out of the trees. 10k is a long way to be running with calf pain. Mucked up 15, and 16 and was tired to 17, then bimbled into the finish. I was exhausted, truly exhausted. Run in - me 1:00, Lucy (6) 1:18.

Need to take a gel next weekend. Need to address my total lack of fitness. Probably need to get my calf looked at so I can go training. Bleed this BUPA contract dry before I start a new job with a new BUPA allowance.

I liked Max's planning, but the area is just not very exciting. Interlopers has some great people in with great ideas, but a lack of good areas apparently. I don't understand this possessiveness over forests. If you have a keen team of volunteers that want to put on a top event, then give them a top notch area to run it on regardless of who may 'own' it.

Afterwards, dead on my feet, on to the yellow course. Lucy has decided that she has moved on from white. Yellow this time 'dark green' next apparently. She is reluctant to hold, or even look at the map though. This could prove problematic. Classic quotes, as I try to explain navigation. "Why do we always have to listen to what the north arrow has to say? How do we know it is not lying?" And she was moaning when she got her feet wet on the way to number 3. You have to be prepared to get your feet wet, I explain. "I am only prepared to get my feet wet at the last control!" She could be a better orienteer if she spent less time chatting and more time looking at the map. Thankfully she found the yellow quite tiring, so walked most of it.

Warm up in Edinburgh while Lucy is at judo, as I won't get time to do one at livi. Jog from judo, up the muddy side of the bog, walked the steep hill at the end to save my calf, thrn jog back via Castro, stopping for drills.

Not many as I had to stop to answer a woman's questions as to what I was doing and why, which made me feel a bit self concious. That's my excuse anyway.

Sprint. First since last year's World Cup MSR in Halden I think. Fun, if not very successful. Main misses, wrong entrance to 3, 4 I went left after the underpass to go down the east side of the building, not realising that there was an uncrosable wall under the blue line. Considerable time loss here, also I *could* have punched through the fence and saved time if I had wanted. Minor moans.

Went right out of 7 - dead end. North out of 10, ditto. Looked at 14-16 while I was going 12-13, struggled to see 15 on the map, thought that it would be an easy control to accidentally skip, then when I was running the leg, I did almost skip it, getting to the intersection 50m south of the control before I remembered. Overshot 20 - it was a v narrow alley, the rest fine. 17 didn't register. There were two punters titting around here in front of me that made me impatient, and I tried to punch through the back (it was grippled), but I must have heard it bleeping for them not me. Ah well, it wasn't the first time this has happened...

V scrappy, 5 secs lost at 3, 7. 10secs lost at 10 (should have looked up!!!) and 15, 15 (?) at 20, and loads at 4. The only ones mum best me on were 4 and 20, so I am pleased. Beth Hanson thrashed me. Good to see her running well.

I enjoyed the course, so thanks Graeme, and thanks to Jane and Jane for the crèche services!

Glorious competitive commute all the way from Watsons along the canal to work. I could see his shadow on my shoulder the whole way into a lively headwind, and I was gritting my teeth and digging in. By the end it felt very much like when BUPA make you do a VO2 max test on a bike, I was exhausted, but still going. I was able to affix the mandatory rictus grin to my face and swallow down the panting when we hit lights at the work industrial estate, cause thems the rules of competitve cycle commuters - show no weakness. He had the good grace to thank me for the draft.

C • Competitive Commute 1

Slow day at work and excess energy - lunchtime cycle. Balerno loop. Did the reps hill in 5:25 which is a bit lame. Fun though. 3 x roadworks, and lots of learner drivers titting around in Currie got tiresome.

Test run for my calf. Over the crags then up the royal mile. I stopped at St Giles's when it was getting too sore. Then on to the BB for trotter drinking :-)

Blood tests back. Vitamin D levels are "severely deficient". This is common for people with ctd, and is good, cause low vit d makes you feel shit (achey bones, muscles, feeling down, poor concentration, tired, weak blah, blah, blah) and I feel shit; so I am looking forward to feeling awesome in a few months when the supplements kick in. That how I likd to think it works anyway. Bring it on!

I had time to do some bike maintainence last night. I now have the luxury of 2 brakes as opposed to 0.5, a front derailier that works (when you give it a hefty kick at the right place at the right time), a massive new bell that sounds like a swiss cow bell, and v my lame but useful in an emergency front light now works.

And I was going to be sensible and rest my calf, but then Tessa asked if I wanted a jog, and how could I refuse! Over the crags and back up the bog. I could straighten my leg nearly fully after the first little bit, it wasn't affecting my stride too much and the chat masked the pain.

Tessa, running! Brilliant!

Woke at 2:30 and couldn't get back to sleep, so got up and did jobs. Well tried to, but my legs were so fucking sore I couldn't stand up, so it was mainly just reading the paper...

No sleep. Lucy....

Holme Fell, short blue

Had to swap down from brown as my calf was just too wrecked. Shame, as I was interested to see the long leg planning on brown. Short blue seemed to get in much nicer areas than brown though, so I wasn't too disappointed. A few secs dropped at 5, 8, poor route to 9, went too low to 13 and had to go back up, rest fine. Liz gubbed me on the run in, along with everyone else. What's new??? Calf was bad throughout, and really v bad on the road bits to 13 and 15. Damn damn damn. Nice area, nice course, nice weekend. I won as well today. Took down Liz and Alice - nice!

I liked the car sharing. Met some lovely MDOC-ers I hadn't met before, who gave the kids and I a lift there and back.

C • SI box times out? 2

Tarn howes middle race, brown.

I didn't do a test run on Friday as I was feeling sluggish, so it was not going to go well, so I decided I'd rather not know what running on my calf felt like. I had forgotten about it, but remembered unfortunately 100m into the jog to the start. Shit. It was pretty agony the whole way around, and I never got out of 4th gear. I yanked it badly coming down the hill to 7, and jogged v slowly for the next few. Passed RRR who was screaming in agony with every step. Oh dear!

I thought the course was enjoyable but straightforward. I only fluffed 12, and even then only by 30secs maybe.

I got to the finish, and things just ceased up completely. Hobbled back to the van, picked up 4 kids, hobbled back to the start, around the white, and back to the van again. No running around the white for me today.

Beaten by lots of old men and one young lady. I'm getting used to this though.