Putting what I've learned into practice

 It's been one heck of a week, culminating in youngest getting covid. They've been so careful but when everyone around you isn't being careful your own choices don't count for much. Anyway, this means it's most certainly time to bring Robbie Britton's article into play. The worry that comes of having a child with the 'rona is most certainly as exhausting and draining as doing something like a hard 50k so I won't be training much at all for the next couple of weeks. 

However, I did go out for a run today as although very cold, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and I thought getting out in the fresh air would be a good thing to do. I only managed about 7 miles as anxiety made my breathing and heart rate go all over the place and I kept stopping to try to calm myself. There's no point in fretting about having a rubbish run- it doesn't matter. I'm doing some exercise (maybe 30 minutes) 4 or 5 days a week and that's enough for now. Something else was making me a bit unsettled and nervous too, but perhaps it's not quite time yet to see if it can be turned around. 

Earlier in the week I went for my first breast-screening. I didn't really know what to expect and it wasn't a fun experience. Actually it was quite unpleasant but that wasn't because of the radiographer, more to do with the fact that being short and having no boobs to speak of, being asked to lean and drape the bits that needed screening didn't really do much. I ended up having one side of my face squashed up against the pillar of the scanner whilst the various bits of the machine had to go to maximum in order to squish my boobs into the right position for taking the pictures. But I'll go again when it's time for the next appointment. Why wouldn't you? It's unpleasant for a little bit but could save my life and I don't have to pay for the privilege. We're so fortunate to have access to screening programmes like this.

Turning 50 has been like running full-speed into a wall and I just need to get by, do enough and try to stay healthy in body and mind. But despite the general hideousness of this week I have seen a small glimmer...

I want to believe I'll end this year in a better place.

One More Light

 This light has been flickering, blinking erratically. It's time to conserve energy.

Recently I read a most timely article from irunfar. I do like that website because it tends to have pieces by writers who have something insightful to say, something that is often thought-provoking and causes me to reflect. I'm not interested in reading about shinyness or gushing write-ups about how a runner is winning everything all the time- I can't relate to those things and there's nothing in that kind of article that inspires me. 

What I read was all about balance. 

Finding balance is something I have always been very bad at- I tend towards an all-or-nothing, throw-everything-I-have-and-am-at-it kind of person. When I'm enthused about something it becomes all-absorbing, all-consuming. That level of obsessiveness is both a blessing and a curse. It's the thing that has kept me going through the years as a single mum and, before then (in a previous life), helped me with creative endeavours but it is also the thing that has lead me to where I am now- burn-out.

"The question to ask isn’t how many miles a week you need to run to complete a 50 or 100 miler, but how many miles (or time) can I sustainably do without getting that balance wrong. This might vary week to week or month to month, and needs to take into account all other kinds of life stressors too. A tough day at work can hit you like a 10-mile threshold run, so chucking another on top in the evening needs to be considered as such."

I've got the balance all wrong. Physical exercise, whether it's running or the CrossFit I've learned to love, is good for both the mind and body. But it's also a stressor. Even if, as I've begun to do, you take a day off in between training sessions or vary what training is done each day, if every day is full of stresses from life and work then actually your body and mind can't recover from and adapt to that training. It's just one load of stress dumped on top of another, day after day after day. I've tried telling myself that it's just perimenopausal malaise and that getting up and out will make it better but that feeling of malaise has become harder and harder to fight. Robbie Britton writes in the article that

"What is possible for one day, one week, or one month can still be too much if you struggle to consistently stay motivated and un-injured. If you find yourself struggling for time to run, it might just be your mind trying to hold you back from doing too much. Levels of enjoyment can be a key indicator of overdoing it (as can more objective data like heart rate variability and sleep quality) but if your training is making you unhappy, then maybe you’re not too busy, but instead overtraining".

It's quite challenging to consider that overtraining could happen when you're barely running 20 miles a week but I think it's a deeply insightful comment. If life stresses have as much impact as a hard or long training session then the amount of time spent training is irrelevant. Sometimes even just a little bit is too much.

Right now work is tough, all the Covid stuff is extremely stressful and I'm in a permanent state of anxiety about trying to stay healthy whilst having to work in very close proximity to children. I'm worried that my own children, one of whom is vaccinated the other who isn't because of needle phobia, will get sick and do badly in exams next summer (we will have GCSEs and A-levels going on so this year is a big one for them both). And I'm constantly torn between all the responsibilities and duties I have as a parent to two teens and as a daughter with a terminally ill parent who lives 250 miles away. I should be in Wales now at a race but I pulled out because I'm too used up and ill-prepared; and I feel guilty because if not in Wales then I should have made the 6 hour drive to my parents. But I'm at home, exhausted. Too frayed even to follow a knitting pattern, read a book or concentrate on a movie.

Last weekend I went back to get some treatment on my dodgy right leg. Compartment syndrome is back but it's not as bad as before, at least not in terms of pain. Training very little doesn't seem to reduce the symptoms and neither has the work I've done on running form. The massage definitely helped but already the benefits of that have worn off. Not sure what the answer is, but for now I think it's time to take some months off. A few weeks back I entered the Centurion One Community event that runs January to April next year, but even though the money's paid I don't have to do it. Certainly I won't be booking any more races for the foreseeable. 

So there is something to do. As someone commented on my Crunch Time post, it's time to take time out. It won't be so hard to regain running fitness if I do want to run again, but if I don't walk away for a bit I'll never heal.

Other hurts also need healing. Those, well I'm not so sure what to do. I don't know if I have enough left of me to take the energy needed to set that process in motion. The hurt itself saps my energy and has dimmed my light, weighing down my soul. All I know is that I can't go on like this.

Hopefully I can find a way to fuel that light so it can shine steadily once more.

with thanks to Robbie Britton, @cavershamjimruns, Linkin Park, and everyone who has sent love and best wishes my way over the last few days

Crunch Time?

 I think it's crunch time- but I don't mean time to do lots of abs exercises. It looks like it's time to make some changes. I know this is something I have written about before and in the past sometimes just deciding that a change is needed has been enough to nudge things in a different direction.

At present, things aren't working well for me. I am broken. Niggles never really go away, my body no longer really heals, I'm never quite entirely well but permanently fighting off lurgies. Now the niggles are another injury, one that just shouldn't be because of how little I'm running.

I know there's a bunch of stuff I can't change and the result of all these stresses is a chronic, cortisol-fuelled response which is affecting how my immune system functions, contributing to poor adaptation to training and causing an increased injury risk. The fact that nothing seems to go right, that life only settles for a week or two before something else comes along to destroy any semblance of balance is part of all this too. It's also the endless struggle of the last eleven years, the unrelenting difficulties of being a single parent on a low income, the only being worthwhile because of what I can give. The mind-numbing, soul-destroying, daily grind of it all.

Next weekend I should be in Wales. It should have been a joyful occasion with the fella. When he dumped me I kept the date because I was determined that he shouldn't spoil it for me, even though going there risked seeing him with someone else or hearing cruel words. I wanted to go for me, to run somewhere new for me, achieve something for me. But I'm broken. Broken enough to know that even just the drive will aggravate this injury further, never mind running 35 miles with rather more ascent and descent that I've done all year. My spirit is broken too. I keep going because that's what everyone needs me to do not because it's what I desire to do. Quite frankly I've had enough. 

So both body and mind have reached a limit. I recall someone saying that when you reach your limit you don't break, just bend. Well I've reached my limits so many times that I'm completely bent out of shape. Stresses beyond a material's elastic limit cause it to become deformed, and I no longer resemble who I was at the start of this year.

I don't know what needs to change; I don't know what I can change. I don't think I will race again though. Life has become so precarious that I can't ever be sure of being well enough or injury-free long enough to commit to a race, nor even have the time to train. In fact it's been a long while since any kind of training schedule was impossible.

But that small voice inside is still raging. The person lost deep inside me is so desperate to get out, to be able to run, free from pain and worry. I wish I knew how to make that happen.