I’ve started having these strange feelings recently. It all started a couple of weeks ago when I fell asleep on the sofa before 9pm. This wasn’t the only time it happened either. On a couple of occasions in the last few weeks I’ve found myself nodding off during quiet periods at work. My appetite has shot up, my body craving fuel and water like a car on a long journey.
There’s nothing wrong. I’m not getting ill, I’m not getting old, and I’m certainly not concerned. I’ve started training again, and am now trying to get used to a feeling that was once normal. Feeling exhausted is usually the norm for me, mere background noise to my daily routine. I get used to it. When I got injured I suddenly found myself feeling awake during the day time, able to get out of a chair without groaning like an old man, eating what most people would consider to be normal amounts. I was pretty close to being a fully functional human being with training not sapping me of all my energy. It felt good.
That has all changed now my foot has healed. The other day I had an X-ray which showed no signs of damage and the sports injury specialist at the QE Hospital told me to crank the training up to full volume, an act akin to telling an alcoholic to stock up on vodka. I duly obliged.
I was reflecting on this in the pub the other evening with two runner friends (before I went home to sleep, of course) and they could identify with my experiences. Rob was amused by the fact that ‘normal’ people tell us we must be so fit when they hear how much running we do. It’s hard to feel fit, though, when you can’t walk up stairs at work without discomfort, when you say no to a game of football because of your sore legs, and when going out to see live music becomes an act of endurance because of how long you have to stand up for. As a good friend once remarked “it takes a lot of commitment to appear as antisocial as we do.”
People seem envious of what they deem to be incredible discipline and work ethic, of your slim build and strong heart. I think if people knew what it was really like they wouldn’t be so jealous.
I can see why so many people quit running. They get fed up of feeling worn out all the time, fed up of the amount of training required to get to and stay at a decent level. It’s a huge effort to put in and it would be much easier to just be ‘normal.’ Not just yet though.
This is the first thing I’ve posted on this site for 2 months. The reason for this is that there’s been nothing to write about. At the end of August I felt pain in my foot towards the end of a session. Since then I’ve taken time off to allow my foot to heal. Whilst I haven’t been doing much running I’ve certainly had plenty of time to think about it. Here are some of my thoughts:
1. I need to stretch more.
Shortly after I first had pain in my foot I went to the physio for advice. It’s fair to say that he was shocked by the stiffness in my calves and my lack of flexibility in general. In the past it has caused me other problems, most notably in my knee and my plantar fascia, and stretching has always been something I’ve done when I get pain or discomfort. I need to think about prevention rather than cure; hopefully, incorporating proper pre- and post run stretching into my daily routine will prevent serious injuries.
2. You can’t beat running.
You really can’t. I’ve joined the gym recently. It is great for keeping my aerobic fitness up whilst I can’t run and I also like having access to more equipment and space than I have at home for doing strength and conditioning exercises. But it’s not the same. It’s enough to keep me from going insane but not enough to give me the feeling of total relaxation and calm that running gives me.
3. It’s not just about competition.
I’m often asked why I run. Most people, thinking back to being forced to run against their will as a child, or to punitive weight loss regimes as an adult, would view it as a chore to run and can’t understand why I would do it voluntarily every day. My usual response is that I enjoy competition and that I derive huge satisfaction from the feeling of self-improvement. But I think there’s more to it than this.
Firstly, running can calm me down in a way that I never really appreciated before. I often get home from work feeling anxious and tense and then just go and run it out of my system. As I just mentioned, other forms of exercise just don’t seem to have the same effect. Perhaps I need to readjust my thinking to convince myself that it is not the simple act of running that is satisfying but the feeling of getting my heart rate up, the feeling of being in good physical condition. In other words, feelings that I can get from acts other than running. Maybe this ‘running is everything’ attitude is what gives me my competitive instinct and to lose it would be to lose my desire to improve. I’m probably over thinking this.
Secondly, running is a big part of my social life. Or rather, running is my social life. It’s how I see my friends. Yes, I know I can do normal things with my friends like go to the pub, and I do, but running friendships are based on other things: the sense of working together to achieve your goals, the sense of camaraderie of being part of a training group, being part of a club. I know lots of good people through running and I want to be able to run with them again.
4. Don’t rush the recovery
Just when I thought I was fully healed a couple of weeks ago the pain returned. I think this tells me that I need to build up my training even more slowly than I first thought.
5. I’d do it all again.
There are some things I will change when I’m back to full training again, such as the stretching and the strength work, as well as running on the road as little as possible, but I’m not going to be making any changes to the running I do. It works for me and gets me in good shape. When I got injured I was in the best shape I’ve ever been in and had the injury struck a couple of weeks later I’d also be writing here about the huge chunks I’d taken off my 10k and half marathon times. It works for me. I just need to take slightly better care of myself.
Now with any luck, the next post to appear here will be about my triumphant return to fitness and to competition, and not another introspective injury update.
Saturday was a very special day for me for a number of reasons. The day started in northern Poland, where we had just spent the last week on holiday. With our flight home not until late morning, we got up early to go down to the beach and watch the sun rise over the Baltic Sea. Whilst I’m aware that I’m boasting here, I’m also aware that this is a real treat and not something I get to experience in landlocked Birmingham. It was stunning.
Once the sun had illuminated the Sopot beach, my runner’s instinct kicked in and I took the opportunity to get one more run in before going home. With my shoes already off and my running kit already on, I ran down the beach towards the city of Gdansk. The sea breeze was cold at first but the rising sun soon kicked in and warmed me up as I ran. At 6 in the morning there were very few people around, with the exception of some friends here and there walking home from a night out, or some early morning swimmers wanting to beat the crowds (or bathe in the nude in the case of one elderly man). After turning around at a pier about 4km away, I picked up the pace on the way back and was probably close to 6 minute mile pace by the end of the run. The combination of being tired from lack of sleep and being in beautiful surroundings put me in an almost trance like state, where I didn’t feel like I was consciously running at all. Left foot and right swapped places effortlessly, only breaking stride to cross a stream or move onto firmer sand nearer the water’s edge. It’s not a run I’m likely to forget any time soon.
We packed up our things and drove to the Gdansk airport to catch our flight back to Birmingham, swapping the blue skies of continental Europe for the more familiar grey skies of the West Midlands. It was good to be back. After lunch with my parents-in-law and some time spent unpacking I embarked on the second installment of my running day. Prior to my holiday I had agreed to pace some friends in their attempt to break 16 minutes for 5000 metres, provided I could get back in time. With the race scheduled for 7:20 in the evening I had no excuse. Not that I needed any.
The pace they were trying to run is close to what I want to run for 10k this weekend, so it served as the ideal training run. The added bonus was that it took place at the track on my old university campus; I was looking forward to running around the campus again and seeing what had changed.
Four others from my training group were there, as was Tim’s friend Sarah who was also trying to run a similar time. I ran a few strides before hand just to check the pace and as soon as the gun went, had a big group behind me trying to hit close to 76 seconds per lap. Within 500 metres I was hitting the right pace for them and now had to just focus on keeping it going and not slowing down or speeding up too much. With a group that size, slowing down could definitely lead to falls and collisions. We hit the first km bang on target in 3:10. I find that I can usually hold a pace quite well once I get onto it and we were hitting each split very close to the pace they had asked for. I looked back at every bend to check everyone was still there: Dan, Tim, Chris, Sarah were all there every time and even Mark, who was looking for a time in the 16:10-16:20 range was hanging on to the back of the group. Every lap that passed with the group still intact made me smile even more. Once we got to 4km in just under 12:40 it became clear that everyone was going to do it and the question now was how much would they all break their PBs by?
Dan, who had been on my shoulder for the last 10 laps and who was clearly itching to go faster, took off and soon got a gap on me. I dropped back to Tim and tried to offer him some encouragement as he made his big push for the finish line. I realised from the pace they were all going that some special times were going to be recorded. Dan was the first of our group over the line in 15:39, 24 seconds faster than he has ever run before. Tim, who kicked past me in the last 200, was next in 15:42, followed by me and then Sarah who also posted a PB. As I turned around to congratulate them, Mark and Chris stormed over the line with the number 16 not yet on the clock. All five of them had run personal bests, and all five had gone sub-16.
I know I shouldn’t bask in the glory of others, but I did feel a real sense of pride in their achievements and was pleased to have been part of their great performances. Everyone in our training group has been training really well this summer so it was satisfying to see it all come together for them. Moments like that are rare, and in an individual sport like athletics, feeling like part of a team effort is unusual but very enjoyable. My personal highlight was seeing my good friend Mark holding his arms aloft in disbelief after breaking a PB that had stood since his teenage years in 1994. It was inspirational to see him run the perfect race after training so hard this summer, and to see him not give up on running a time he ran half a lifetime ago. I will bear that in mind next time I complain about having PBs that are more than one year old.
A day of running that starts on a moonlit beach in Sopot and ends on a floodlit track in Coventry is not the kind that happens very often, nor is it one that most people would envisage when asked to describe the ideal running day. It sure was fun though.
You might not find the word in the Oxford English Dictionary, nor would a Wikipedia search prove fruitful. So here is the definition, courtesy of Tim who coined the phrase:
“an athlete whose power of 10 profile contains results for so many events that the site puts a scroll bar in so you can see all their PBs.”
This is the kind of thing some of us runners talk about – exciting hey? Basically, according to Tim you’re a scroller if you race over a wide range of distances. Personally I don’t see anything wrong with this; on the other hand Tim thinks it is a disaster and was very upset when the site decided to rank parkruns separately from 5ks thus pushing him over the 9 event threshold and into scrollerhood (scrollerdom? scrollership? scrollery?).
With 14 different distances on my page, I am definitely one. Four of those have been added this summer which distorts things a bit. The new distances I’ve tried this summer have been 800, 1200, 1500 and the mile. Two of these are fairly standard events whereas 1200 and the mile are more novelty events that I may or may not end up doing again. It has been fun though, and I’ve enjoyed the challenge of racing over new distances. One thing I have found useful is the ability to really push myself over a short distance which has translated into better times for 3000 and 5000 which are my main events on the track. Some of those races have been training runs and some have been part of a double or even triple in the same day.
I’m enjoying mixing up my training and experimenting with new things. One is racing a lot over a range of distances (being a scroller), one is training with a group on a Tuesday and Saturday under Bud’s guidance and another is running more doubles now I’ve got a bit of time off work.
It’s fun and I am looking forward to what the next few months hold for me running-wise.
May started with a surprise PB over 10k. Two weekends later I ran 3 races on the same day; a 1500, a 5000 and then a 400m relay leg. I followed that up with a PB at 5000 metres last weekend to win the county championships and then decided to try and squeeze one more race in before the month was out. In those races I had managed to amass PBs over 3 different distances and really wanted a crack at a 4th, this time over 3000 metres. The 4 in 4 in 31 days plan was also due to the fact that it’s my birthday today and I wanted to see if I could crack all my PBs before another year was added to my age.
Unfortunately my plan to leave a mark whilst the branding iron was still hot was foiled. Last night the iron was distinctly lukewarm; I hadn’t really recovered from the weekend and I knew it before the race started. It went out slow and I found myself at the front after half a lap, towing the rest of the field behind me. The group that stayed with me dwindled to 4 and we hit 1km in 2:59 and a mile in around 4:46. Just before 2k one of the young athletes in the lead group came round me and took off. This coincided with my legs giving way and I had no response to a surge that was probably no quicker than a 68 second lap. I tucked in behind the two other athletes who came past me and outkicked one of them down the home straight. I finished 3rd in 8:57.
I had tried to push my luck and as a result I finished in a time much slower than I should be capable of on current form. I might be a year older today but I’m still no wiser! Tim had a poor run too, having also run a PB at the weekend. Mark on the other hand, who didn’t have a track 5k in his legs, ran his best time for nearly 2 decades. The moral of this story? Race less, train more.