PREPARATIONS

April 29, 2022April 29, 2022 ~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

My taper week for the half marathon has become a full rest week because I could feel my hip tightening up. I was planning to run Monday, Wednesday and Saturday but after Monday I decided not to. I’ve done a half before where it seized up after 10km and finishing that was pretty miserable so I didn’t want to risk it. But it’s actually feeling pretty good now, after a few days of foam rolling my bottom. That’s something to remember for the future. I think the tightness is the IT band, but a lot of the IT band’s insertion is in the glute max.

The other thing was that in the past few weeks I’ve started feeling very tired and wanting to nap a lot in the afternoons. I probably need to get my iron levels checked (like I was supposed to two times before…). But I started taking iron tablets again and either that or the fact I’m not running at the moment has me feeling a lot better.

So between those two things I’ve gone from feeling very optimistic to very pessimistic to a little bit optimistic again. Is 1:40 still realistic? I think so….

The plan became a bit fraught. My sister is doing it as well which presents Monty problems. The idea was that my dad would look after Monty for the morning and my mum would either come in to meet us or go in with us and potter about for the morning.

But unfortunately as of a few days ago dad isn’t allowed to be left alone with Monty. Dad seems to like Monty, but dad seems to believe that because he’s 10x bigger he can just use brute force to get him to do what he wants, especially when he’s misbehaving. When we were both there, he tried grab/pick up Monty by the neck/throat and shouted at him not to “mess him around”. Sister and I were both a bit concerned to say the least. So unfortunately now mum is going to stay with Monty and she won’t be coming in to meet us, which she’s upset about and means we have to faff around with baggage.

I’m quite frustrated about my dad. I always temper my expectations where he is concerned, but I thought we could at least leave Monty with him for a few hours and he’d be present enough to supervise and stop Monty from being able to harm himself… I didn’t think we’d have to worry about dad being a source of potential harm.

I just can’t understand what made him think that was an acceptable way to behave.

Parkies 🌳

April 10, 2022April 10, 2022 ~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I have a half marathon in three weeks and I’m feeling…. quietly confident? Training seems to have come together as well as it could have. The last one I did was in August and it was a bit of a disaster, but this time I’ve been running 16-18ks on Sundays for the past few months, intervals or hills once a week and parkrun tempo runs on Saturdays, so I’m probably in pretty good shape. Not as good as a few years ago, but maybe 1:40? 1:35 would be amazing but probably not. 1:40 is a 4:45 per km pace which is about 45s faster than I’m doing my long (comfortably) slow runs so it sounds achievable. I can feel my left calf is a bit tight but not worryingly so and my right hip has been tight too but I think the foam roller will sort that out.

Sundays are long run day and I usually manage to time it so I’m getting through the park just before they’re starting Junior Parkrun, but today my timing was not so good and I got accosted by one of the marshals… “Hey, I saw you yesterday? You looked like you were doing well? what was your time?”, so I stopped to speak to him and he proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes telling me his entire life history, including but not limited to: he used to run 21 minute 5ks but then he gained two stone and now he does 28 minutes, when he was younger he used to be really lazy but he’d always run up stairs “it must be something autistic in me that makes me want to run up stairs” (umm, ok 🤔). His daughter used to be the fastest runner of her age in the county but then she put on weight and now she runs 30 minute 5ks (hmmm), he runs as fast as elite runners up hills because hills just don’t bother him (hmmm), he doesn’t use a watch for running but he always know exactly how fast he’s running down to within a few seconds of his mile pace (hmmm), he decided to start doing triathlons a few years ago and the swimming turned out OK because he had strong shoulders from playing rugby and was coached by the former head coach of the British Commonwealth Swimming Team something or other (hmmm)…. and so it went on. Anyway after about 10 minutes of this I was starting to feel really cold so I made my excuses and left, but I’ll probably see him again at Parkrun next week 😕

I like sleeping

April 4, 2022April 5, 2022 ~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

Monty is being quite difficult at night now. It started last Sunday, i.e. when we changed the clocks. Probably changing the clocks upset his routine, which we didn’t really consider at the time. He was settling down in his pen in the living room at night, but now he seems very stressed at being left in the pen. So we tried letting him sleep out of the pen, and it’s a bit hit and miss. Sometimes he settles on the sofa, other times he seems restless and paces around a lot and goes behind the curtains and looks out of the window. I think he doesn’t really feel safe at night on his own, which is strange because he’s always been happy at night up til now and he’s happy to nap in there on his own during the day time.

Apparently adolescent dogs can go through something called a fear period where they just seem to suddenly get scared by things they never used to, so maybe that’s it. Some people say you should just put them in a crate/pen and let them cry it out, but it seems so mean and counter-productive. We tried that for about an hour and when we went down he was genuinely very stressed and took a few hours to calm down. It’s not that he’s being naughty, it’s that the little guy has his own needs and for whatever reason he’s actually upset! So over the past week we’ve had three nights between us of sleeping on the sofa with him. Which isn’t ideal.

So anyway… I think he’s going to be sleeping in my room soon. I just hope he can behave and not start chewing my bed sheets 🙄