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.

Halloweenies

Not so much running and Crossfit happening at the moment. Energy levels and general health have taken a bit of a dive, and I've been experiencing some kind of anxiety attacks as well. I have sought medical advice but there's not a lot anyone can do really. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so strong- somehow I keep going when what I think my mind and body need are proper rest and respite. But proper rest and respite aren't available to me so I'll have to keep going until I break.

Recently there was a cute free pattern on the Lovecrafts website for little figures called Halloweenies (the pattern is by Cilla Webb- find her on Instagram @cillaspurls). I've been making quite a few of these as they're great for using up DK yarn and don't take long to make. 

These are the first three I made. Since then I've adapted the pattern slightly and made little horns for them too:

They don't require any special techniques; the body splits when you get to knitting the legs and although the pattern says to keep the spare stitches on the needle I prefer to transfer them to a stitch holder while I knit the first leg. The arms and horns are knit separately and sewn on.

I think it could be fun to adapt these to make something Christmassy but I'm not thinking that far ahead yet, although I do have sparkly DK yarn left over from last year's Hugglings which would be perfect. 

For now, back to some knitting but hopefully I'll have some running-related things to write about fairly soon.

Not the A100 Race Report

A week ago I spent a somewhat surreal weekend around the fringes of Centurion Running's Autumn 100.

It came about because I had offered to pace someone on leg 4 of the race as their pacer had gone down with Covid-19. The someone was a person I'd never met but had seen a few of their tweets as I follow a few runners who follow them, and I thought it would be a lovely thing to do to support someone in their 100 mile endeavour. It also occurred to me that running leg 4 might help to offset the unhappiness from the last time I was a part of that race, the story of which you can read here. 

So Saturday was spent dot-watching. Not just Nick's dot but also several other dots too, willing people on to run well. Nick was doing brilliantly and by late evening I thought rather than try to get some sleep at home I should drive to Goring and set up camp in my car in the station carpark. It looked like he'd finish leg 3 well ahead of schedule and I was terrified I'd fall asleep at home and not be at Goring when I needed to be. Crewing or pacing is such a responsibility and, as well as anticipating disasters, you have to anticipate things going far better than planned and be there in good time. I was also very anxious about parking- the station carpark isn't big and with so many people running I worried about being able to park. So fuelled by the fear of messing up on pacing duty I got to Goring about 10.30pm. The back of the car was set up with blankets, duvet and pillows so, after buying some snacks, I curled up under the duvet and alternated between dot-watching and occasionally dozing. 

Nick was going beautifully on leg 3 as was Mike, with whom I ran much of legs 2 and 3 of A100 back in 2018. I was so delighted for them both, especially Mike as he was aiming for a fast race. But there's something about that stretch of the Ridgeway at night, something that just seems to sap all a runner's energy, cause mystery injuries to appear, and make the wheels fall off...

Both those dots suddenly seemed to be making no progress- every time I checked the live tracking they seemed to have scarcely moved. Then Mike's dot disappeared, his name had gone from the list of runners too which seemed so strange as he'd been smashing it. Nick's dot crept along but barely. Then a couple of messages came through on twitter. Nick was at a CP but feeling awful; Mike was at HQ and had called it a day due to a hip flexor issue (same as I had in 2019) and the fact that his feet were destroyed. (I've seen a photo since and it's not pleasant.)

At about 3.30am I headed over to HQ to see Mike while he was waiting for a lift home and also to give him a gift I'd made:

Yes, a knitted hammerhead shark.
       

He was pretty philosophical about his race but it must have been a huge disappointment to have trained so hard only for it all to have suddenly gone so wrong. @teef2 was there too, his race had also gone wrong but he too was quite philosophical about it all. 

Once he'd gone I watched people coming in either having finished the race or at the end of leg 3. I'd forgotten what 100 mile races look like and what they can do to people. Being a spectator to it all wasn't comfortable- people reduced to pale shadows of themselves, unseeing and barely able to speak. Had a lovely chat with someone I follow on twitter but had never met before. He'd called it a day after leg 3 too and again seemed pretty ok with that all things considered. And all the while I watched that dot and the minutes inexorably pass. 

The dot hardly moved but the time slipped by all too quickly. I was watching the time as much as the dot now, talking to the dot on my phone, coaxing and encouraging it to keep going. 4.30am came and went, 5am, 5.15, 5.20... I knew it was going to be very tight, but I'd decided my runner wasn't going to get a choice- I was going to get him out on leg 4 before the cut-off. It was then that I realised I had no idea whether this was his first 100 miler, whether this race was particularly important to him, or what his goals were for the race. No matter: I intended to get him onto leg and and keep him going until we were told to stop. That way at least he would have given it his all and not chosen to quit.

Well, Nick was well known to the Centurion team so when he staggered in at about 5.30am he was well looked after. I said hello, introduced himself and announced that we'd be heading out onto the last leg so he would have up to to 15 minutes to get sorted. Poor guy, there was me being all bright and breezy and he was almost asleep on his feet! We headed out onto the Thames Path with about 10 minutes to spare. 

Almost immediately it became apparent that we wouldn't make it. Nick was struggling to walk and needed to stop several times but each time he stopped he would begin to fall asleep. I'm not great at small talk but all the way to the CP at Pangbourne I just talked. About owls, moths, running at night, jays, mist, my children, work. Anything that came into my head really just to try to keep him awake. It didn't really work. What he needed most was daylight but we couldn't wait for that because he'd miss the cut-off. The sky was beginning to lighten but not quick enough- perhaps if it had been a bright sunny day there would have been more light a little sooner. We plodded into Pangbourne about 10 minutes or so after the cutoff, the sky a leaden grey. 

A flight of stairs (leg 4 is the leg of stairs!) up to the room where there were chairs, hot drinks and food, and the lovely Ally. Within a few minutes Nick was considerably more alive but it was too late to continue. I stayed there a little while with him, watching him devour a huge quantity of cheese and pleased to see some colour return to his face. I decided I would run the whole leg to make up for the people I knew who hadn't been able to finish but assuring the CP volunteers that I would not offer any assistance to runners I might happen to meet. Before I set off I took the knitted yellow shrimp off my race vest and gave it to Nick as a sort of consolation prize. No buckle, but no-one else will have earned a shrimp!

On the way to the turnaround I caught up with the sweeper and ran along with him. We then caught up with a runner and her pacer in Reading. She was walking and content in the knowledge that they were not going to make it in time. I ambled along with them up to the checkpoint but decided I would turn around as soon as we got there and head straight back- the morning was passing and I hadn't planned on being out for so long. 

Of course it had to start raining quite heavily as I went back through Reading! Luckily nothing as biblical as in 2018 and it did stop somewhere before Pangbourne. It was a strange feeling running back along the TP and I got a bit nervous and jittery as though I was actually finishing the race. It got quite embarrassing hearing passers-by cheering me on and I kept saying "No, I'm just out for a run, not in the race." Anyway, after stopping in Whitchurch for a lovely chat with a couple out walking I eventually arrived back in Goring about 6 hours after setting out, just in time to cheer in the last two runners to finish.

I was shattered, legs sore and so grateful that I could spend some real life time with my tiny phone friends.  Thank you to @NickThompson3, @runningmiker, @teef2, @photogirlruns and the other people I met but can't remember their names.

A Day Out on the North Downs

 

Yesterday I talked myself back into doing a race. It was one I'd been talked into by a friend who decided I needed cheering up and the best thing was to join them running the Maverick Frontier North Downs 54km. A few weeks ago though I decided I'd pull out as I'm exhausted from the weekly commute to Devon and have found the start of the new term very stressful; running my first race in over a year really felt that it would be one thing too many. Then my friend fell over and got injured so there seemed little point in driving down to Surrey for a race I wasn't fit for.

However on Thursday night I packed my kit and Saturday morning I got up early to make the journey. As you'll know from this blog, I always get heeby-jeebies before a race no matter whether I'm in good shape, well-prepared or not, and this was no exception. Waiting for the race to start I met a pair of lovely dogs and their grown-up and that helped settle my nerves a little. - The Maverick races often allow cani-cross runners and there were quite a few people running the shorter distances with their dogs -

I was uncomfortable with the mass start. It wasn't a huge field but I didn't much like being so close around other people. The first little while of the race was like that too as all the routes shared the same first few miles and the trails were quite narrow in places. In fact I don't think I spent all that much time running completely out of sight of people which is unusual- generally once the field spreads out after the start I end up on my own for the whole time! 

It took me a long time to settle into running. It was already feeling warm by the time we started, a little after 9am, and I had a lot of difficulty regulating my body temperature and heart rate. Some of that I put down to nerves but probably mostly it's down to the loopy hormones. I started HRT during the summer, and although it's helped with some symptoms, it isn't a cure-all and I think this is something I am going to need to develop strategies to deal with if I decide to keep racing. I just tried to keep to an even level of effort and told myself to walk if that was what I needed to keep myself safe.

Eating wasn't great during the race. I ate a few things from my pack but mostly had pineapple and water melon from the aid stations. I did drink a lot but only had two tiny wees during the race and not much better once home and drinking chamomile tea. Reflecting on that now I suspect I was dehydrated in the days before the race and that would have had a significant impact on both temperature regulation and heart rate.

Despite the difficulty settling into things I did mostly run and smile. It felt good to be out and it was also good to have to do nothing but move forward and take care of myself. The terrain was quite runnable on the whole with a few sharp climbs. The worst of the descents were all in the last third- not what you want when you're tired, not concentrating so well, and when your legs are sore! It seemed that I was the only person out there with sticks and I was very grateful for them- as much for when I got tired and fed up and bored as for the hills. Using them kept me walking purposefully when I couldn't face running.

One of my best memories from yesterday was running through a field of maize. It was really tall- much taller than me (but then I am vertically-challenged!) and lots of wild carrot was growing around the base of the maize. There was a group of teenagers headed towards me, shambling along in a tired and chaotic manner with rucksacks and singing 'He's Got the Whole World In His Hands'. I joined in because it's a joyful song and you can't beat a bit of a sing-along mid-ultra. They smiled and sang a bit louder and I wished them luck on their trek. I have a feeling that group have never had the opportunity to get out on the trails before- I hope they had a great day out. I think the hill in the photo above was just after this.

I did get a bit miserable in the last third or so. I'd forgotten how hard running ultras is and my right hip flexor (the one that went wrong at A100 in 2019) had really started to bother me. But earlier on I'd chatted with couple of guys who were running their first ultra and I remembered the advice I'd given them and thought I should really follow it too! Just the usual stuff- things will hurt but ignore it because they'll stop hurting and something else will hurt instead; don't quit just because you're tired and feel miserable; you'll get a 2nd and 3rd wind... And I reminded myself that I'd run enough so that I could literally walk it out and still finished inside the cut-off. In fact I managed a reasonable amount of running in the last 15km and I'm proud that I didn't let the couple of horrid descents near the end get to me. Previously I've let things like that get to me and I've wasted precious minutes standing being cross and miserable and sweary rather than accepting it and cracking on.

Anyway, top 10 finish and all but one of the women ahead of me are considerably younger so I've still got a bit of something in my legs!

I do have a couple of races booked before the end of the year. Not sure if I will run them- apart from anything else I'm doing a 500 mile round trip most weekends to look after a family member who's terminally ill and this could mean running will have to take a back seat. But at least I know I can still run, and I can still be focussed and stubborn and determined.

Hopefully there will be more miles and smiles before the year is out.

A kind of message in a bottle

 I think this is now the only place I can say something that you might see:

The next week will be far harder than you know. But it is finite, you have complete control over when your suffering will end. Just remember: that's a privilege. Don't waste everything that was sacrificed for that privilege.

Message ends.