RACE DAY!

So, today was race day. 

Did I do it? Yes I did. 

Was it fun? Yes.

Would I do it again? Yes.

Am I in lots of pain now? YES.

So it's been pretty quiet on the blog lately. The reason is simply that training came to a standstill. Just before Christmas I'd just about reached the 10k mark for the first time. Then family came to visit, then I had to travel south for work commitments, then I had 2 weeks off work with a horrendous virus, then the weather made a turn for the worse, work commitments ramped up... Basically life happened and before I knew it I'd had missed as many weeks of training as I'd put in.

Thoroughly demoralised and demotivated it was easy to put off getting back into training and I seriously considered dropping out the race a few times. Enough people convinced me not to though, so with a week until the race I made time to run once, just to see how dire things had become.

I fully expected my fitness and abilities to be back at square one. However, I was able to run 6k (slowly) without needing to stop for a breather or to walk. Remarkably, my lungs at least had retained their abilities to keep me going while running. My legs didn't complain at the time but caused a considerable amount  of misery over the next few days.

So, reassured that I hadn't returned to my former abysmal fitness levels, we got in the car and drove the 10 hours to Derby. I abandoned all hope of running the distance in under an hour and just hoped I would finish.

Well I did. Remarkably the work I put in over those first 12 weeks got me fit enough to do it, even though I had a long break from running after that. The atmosphere at the race was great. Loads of people cheering the participants. It was great running round my home town, and crossing the finish line was quite the moment. The goal was achieved. It was the first time since I'd started running that I'd run 10k with no breaks and no walking. I just ran it. As I suspected my final time was 01:09:13. I came roughly 3500th out of approximately 4000 runners. So, not an  amazing time but who cares? I crossed the finish line. 

I'm sure if I keep at it I can shave a little off that time.

Conclusions:

1) Anyone can go from zero to 10k if they follow a sensible training plan and give themselves plenty of time.

2) Extended breaks from running aren't the end of the world. You will be surprised how much of your fitness you retain.

Now, off for a lie down. God my legs are sore...

Week 12 Run 1

Since my last post there have been a few set backs that have put me a little off track.   A big one was an arm injury. One doesn't really think about how injuring an arm would impact your running, but my left arm was very bruised and swollen around the elbow joint, making it hard to bend. The picture on the left really doesn't do it justice. Given the important role arms play in running, not being able to bend my arm without pain was a problem. I allowed myself some time off to recover. The weather hasn't exactly been favourable either, and as a result I've been doing lots of staying indoors in the warm and dry. Sadly, I think my body got the message that the hard times were over and it could start to get lazy again. I was doing a lot of computing while my arm was recovering, which meant lots of sitting, which meant sore knees through lack of movement (the precise thing I started Desk to 10k to avoid).

Week 12 begins...

This is a photo from my final run of week 11. It was a 50 minute run not far from where I work. Week 11 dragged on a little bit, partly due to poor weather, partly due to a sore collection of chill blains on my toes, and partly because life just got in the way. So it's now Tuesday on what should be week 12, but I'm still calling that on-track.

Running for 50 minutes is quite the landmark for me. It was definitely type 2 fun - the kind where you enjoy the activity once it's over. It was tiring, though not painful. I didn't get any shin splints or calf pain, so that's a definite plus. I did get some uncomfortable tingling in my right toes though, so I'll have to investigate the cause. It's happened before on a long run. The first time I just thought my shoe was too tight. Don't think that was the cause today though. According to some quick internet research this is quite a common phenomenon. Some possible causes are:

Another sucky short run

Photo by Jonas Nordberg on Unsplash

Run 2 of week 10 was supposed to be a bit of a landmark moment as it was the first run of my training programme without any walk breaks. It was a short run, so only 25 minutes. I ran for 40 minutes last time, so should have been achievable.

Alas, the short run struck again and I had one of my least enjoyable runs to date. For a start it was freezing, and breathing in very cold air isn't pleasant. Then, quite early on my right shin started hurting and got progressively worse. To make matters worse, there were a lot of free roaming cows on the road. They weren't particularly enamoured with me running towards them and really didn't like my metronome, so I had to do a lot of stopping and starting. Cows don't bother me, but if I'm bothering them I don't want them to panic and step out in front of cars. So although I ran for 25 (painful) minutes, there were lots of short pauses for cows and vehicles. Not the 25 glorious minutes of uninterrupted running I'd hoped for.

Meh. There are good runs and bad ones. I'm not letting this crappy run deter me, though I really need a strategy for reducing shin pain. Annoyingly I'm not sure what brings it on during certain runs and not others. It's usually on the right though, so there's some sort of imbalance at the root I'm sure. And yes I DID do a proper dynamic warm up before running today, so that shouldn't have been the cause. More work to be done.

6k Milestone

Today I ran the first run of week 10 and covered 6km. (I'm not sure what happened to the big 5K milestone, I didn't seem to notice it.) Today I ran longer and further than I ever have before. The intervals were: Run 20 mins, Walk 2mins, Run 20 mins. The picture on the left was taken after I arrived back at work (excuse the hat hair).

So as I continue on this training plan I continue to surprise myself. Just a few weeks ago running 6km was a laughable concept, but I just managed it without much difficulty. It's not particularly impressive running 6k in 40 minutes, but it's impressive for me! As long as I keep seeing improvements in my fitness and endurance I'm not too fussed about speed. I'll worry about that later. There is still 19 weeks until the Derby 10K, so plenty of time for improvement.

I'm off now for a cup of tea. I'm still rather dazed after running for 40 minutes. The 25 minute short run this week suddenly seems a bit tame. I'm not getting complacent though. Those short runs can be nasty. It'll probably knock me back a few pegs.

A good short run!

I completed week 9 today, and although the temperature outside was absolutely freezing, I was at least rewarded with the view above. This week I finally had a good short run. After 8 weeks of terrible short runs it has now been proven that a good short run is possible. If you haven't been following this blog, ever since I started my running training the second run of each week is a designated short run. This has always been the least enjoyable (until this week), as I have always felt tired, my legs always hurt and felt heavy, and I usually struggled to breathe comfortably.

End of week 8

I've reached the end of week 8 and ran for 20 uninterrupted minutes today for the first time. Yay!

Next week is the second "easy" week, which just means I'm not expected to add any more distance to my training. During the last easy week I decided to experiment with cadence, because mine is pretty low (definitely more a jogging pace than running). I'll probably do that again because today I was experiencing some shin pain, which I'm pretty sure is due to my slow pace.

This article explains how increasing running cadence reduces the stress on bones and soft tissues, and ultimately the pain you experience while running. It also explains the danger of making any drastic changes, so a very gradual approach seems to be the way forward.