Blisters

Barcelona was lovely. Got some nice runs in. I studied my map of Barcelona and saw a lovely park with the old Olympic stadium in. I though I would run to it and the do a few laps maybe. When I got there I found it was on top of a massive plateau. The heat and the steps nearly killed me but the view was worth it.

On Sunday morning Bryan picked me up at 06:30 and we headed down to Port Erin to start our long walk to Bride. It was a gorgeous morning so plenty of suncream was applied.

On the way down towards Dalby I mentioned I could feel my right heel getting a bit hot. At mile 5 we stopped and I removed my socks to discover a 20pence piece sized blister. Not good for mile 5 so I put some Vaseline on the blister, changed socks, tightened my shoes and we set off again.

We popped into my Dad's house for a potty break and a brew in Peel at 09:30 and set off once again. At Kirk Michael, mile 18, I complained of a lot of tenderness on my heel still and so removed the socks one more. I didn't like what I saw at all. Basically my 20pence blister was now on top of what I can only describe as a giant 3cm diameter bubble wrap bubble. Ick, my blister had a blister!!

Bryan and I agreed that it would be daft to take the skin off it as it was clearly very deep
. I had to pull the pin at mile 18 and had to be collected. Bryan carried on so I jumped on my bike as soon as I got home and rode back down the Lhen to meet him. It was 30 miles to my house and he did it in 6hours 15 which put the pace at 12:30's which I believe is perfect.

Bryan had a few blisters of his own, I had another on my left heel. He was in the forces and spent some time with the Royal Marines on Dartmoor and said he would "fix" the blisters. This involved soaking a few feet of thread in surgical spirit. Lancing the blister with the needle, going out the other side and then drawing the soaking thread right through the blister over the red flesh below. I have never felt pain like it and let everyone within earshot know. My wife suggested I try childbirth. I didn't make any noise on the second one.

Today (the day after) I cannot really see any blister. Bryan's trick seems to have worked a treat. My legs are quite sore - I am walking about like an old man. I only managed 18 miles! The parish walk is a lot tougher than it seems when you sign up in the comfort of your computer room!

My conclusion is that I have been running too much, my skin has hardened in the wrong places, its an utterly different action to walking. I am going to only walk now (one I have repaired) to try and toughen my skin up.

The Rain in Spain

Will hopefully not be falling on me next week!

I am off to Barcelona for a week tomorrow. I will take my trainers but I am not expecting too much.

Not a bad week, stong 10 miler at the weekend, nice mid week 8, a little warmup 4 and 5 more this evening.

My heel is not improved, but its not deteriorated either. I have been given a good set of excercises from a physio friend and I purchased a little wooden roller from body shop. The roller seems to work wonders. Its a real pleasure pain thing when using it - creepy.

When I get back next weekend, Bryan and I are planning on doing Port Erin - Slot, Peel, Ballaugh, Jurby Bride. I guess I will find out whether I am ready or not!

Good luck to the folk doing the Andreas 20k tomorrow. Its my local race and I am going to miss it. Real shame but my flight leaves at 10:55am.

Policeman's Heel

Policeman's what?

Its a term used to describe a condition I have developed called plantar fasciitis. Its probably come about through training without proper progressive overload (too much too soon) and carrying too much weight.

Wiki describes it as "a painful inflammatory condition caused by excessive wear to the plantar fascia of the foot or biomechanical faults that cause abnormal pronation of the foot."

I had this a year or so ago, saw a consultant podiatrist for it. He prescribed rest. It worked.

Oh well, thats out of the question; so pain it is then. Back to the training...

I have been running doing two half marathons a week, Saturdays and Wednesdays since my last post with some 5 milers in between. During the weekend halves, I have been doing a few miles walking at a fast 5k pace to get my speed up. Its going well and I am not really tired (as in have to go to bed immediately) afterwards now and am happy that my core fitness is getting stronger.

Not a lot to report really, I am not going to let the foot thing stop me unless it gets too painful to train. Right now its painful when I get up in the morning but it does not seem to be getting any worse.

I want to do a 20 miles with my friend fellow Parish entrant Bryan at the weekend. He doesn't know that yet so we will see how it goes!

All systems go

I have had my best week so far.

On Monday I ran 11miles around the Point of Ayre. Tuesday was an easy 4 mile run along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and Wednesday was a longer 10 mile run up the Canal with some colleagues.

On Saturday I planned on doing a long walk because, after all, that's what I am training to do. I felt that after a good few weeks of putting a base down, it was time to test myself a little. With only 9 weeks to go I felt that I should be able to do 20miles at this stage. My parents live in Peel and I live in Bride so it made sense for me to walk the Parish route backwards from Bride down the Lhen to Ballaugh, through Kirk Michael and along the coast road to Peel. With a plan in mind I set off at 7am.

I decided not to racewalk as such, just walk quickly. I was worried that my knees would begin to hurt if I locked them back every stride. I set of fairly steadily doing around 4.5 miles an hour for the first hour. The sun was out and after an hour I still felt very fresh so I got into my pace and pushed on a little, upping the pace to 5 miles an hour for the next hour. I popped into the post office in Ballaugh for a quick Lucozade and a bar of fruit and nut. Hardly the best nutrition but I fancied it and I make up my rules after all :-)

Revived and feeling a little altruistic (I didn't want the change chinking in my pocket so I put it in a lifeboat box) I pushed on to Kirk Michael at a quicker pace and did the next hour at 5.5 miles an hour.

Just after Glen Wyllin I realised that I was racewalking without having made the decision to do so. My mind started to wander and I pondered how the style came to be in the first place and realised that its just a natural thing that starts to happen when you walk quicker over time. When the body is tired it naturally looks for efficiencies and that's how I ended up. It is just an efficient fast walk. Maybe that's obvious? Ahem! Its probably the just Lucozade talking to me...anyway my knees felt OK so I kept going. The last hour I was conscious of a potential blister on the ball of my left heel. Not a lot you can do about that. I dropped the pace a little, back down to 5 miles an hour and got to Peel just under 4 hours. A nice 5mph average. I surprised myself, I felt fine, no blisters and no sore knees.

I woke up this morning, go out of bed and nearly fell flat on my face! My legs decided to go on strike, reminding me that I had taken the %^&$ the day before. The score settled, I slowly warmed up myself and spent the morning repairing the drive. My drive is 1/4 of a mile long and I shovelled around a tonne of stone into a trailer and then back off the trailer onto the drive I was absolutely shattered at the end. So I fell asleep. I just woke up from a sleep and I feel like an old man Now my arms are killing as well as my legs and feet!

Oh well, it was a super week 45 miles and a repaired drive :-)

...and I am STILL 87 kilos!!!

Will it last?

Last week was unnervingly incident free. Got out on Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Monday. I managed to cover 26 miles with the longest being a 10.5 miler.

I have purely been running to get my core fitness up in the shortest time possible and to (hopefully) strengthen my knees.

I really can feel my fitness surging back remarkably quickly! Yesterday, when the sun was out , running in a vest weather, I felt the best I have felt for a few years. Of course the temptation is to crank up the pace - but that is a dark world fully of the promise of injury. I find it SUCH a struggle to hold myself back when I feel like that. I kept looking down at my watch and seeing my pace higher than I planned even though I feel I am holding back.

Oh but to just sprint across the dunes :-)

My plan is to carry on this way, increase the mileage to 30 this week. The weekend after next I want to walk the parish section from Bride to Peel (backwards of course!) which is around 20 miles or so.

Fingers crossed, things are looking up...

Elevated Training Plans Scupperd

Happy Easter blogaholics.

My training has been going rather well this past week with a slight low on Wednesday.

I was in Leeds and had arranged to meet some colleagues outside my flat. I live on the 10th floor so, of course, I got changed and took the lift. The lift came to a juddering halt at floor 2. I waited for a while for it to restart but it didn't and none of the buttons would respond. After several minutes experimenting with the alarm button I eventually got through to an operator. The conversation went something like:

Operator: Hello?
Me : Hi.
Operator: Are you in a lift?
Me : (wanted to say no you got the wrong number!) Yes I am.
Operator: Are you stuck?
Me: (wanting to say - no I just needed to talk to someone) Yes I am.
Operator: Where are you?
Me: You mean like - what floor?
Operator: No, which city.
Me: (wanting to sue the management company) I am in Leeds
Operator: Do you have amobile phone to call the fire brigade with?
Me: No! I am wearing lycra and trying to go for a run!

75 minutes later the fire brigade forced the doors open. I didn't bother going for a run, I went to the pub instead. My friends (not surprisingly) hadn't waited for me.

The rest of the week was excellent. I did a half Marathon round the north of the Island, mainly offroad on the Ayres on Sunday.

I am currently teetotal - 2 days and counting. Watch this space...

Kneesy Does it

Last week was a good one for me. I feel like I am making progress. I got out again on Friday and did a nice 4 mile run through the Bride hills. On Saturday I got up early while the girls went to Ballet in Douglas and went out.

Funny thing for me is that I can run for two hours but walking for two hours is harder as it puts a lot of strain on my knees. Last weekend I had to run walk - alternating every 15mins to take the strain off. The irony is that run-walking is supposed to alleviate the strain of running giving you a chance to recover while walking, whereas I am run-walking to alleviate the strain of running!? If I am to walk for a day or so in June non stop, it seems reasonable that I should be able to walk for two hours non stop in March. So that's exactly what I did. I didn't have a GPS or anything but I guesstimate it was between 9 and 10 miles.

Now its Monday morning. I got up early to do a quick 4 mile run and my right knee is too sore. It feels inflamed under the kneecap. I know its from locking it back racewalk style for those two hours. I have been doing strength exercises in both my shoulder and my ITB to help prevent injury but the knee pain is back. Problem is its even too tender to run on.

So here I am wondering why I am continually beset by problem week after week. Maybe I overdid it? Perhaps so, but if I am to walk all day long by June I am rather painted into a corner and have little choice but to walk further.

I am worried about my knee and wonder if I should try and walk fast instead of doing knee locking racewalking. Can I go fast enough to do the Parish this way? What do other people do?

Ugh!

Answers on a postcard please...