Tag: running

Energy

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

I started running after work this week and it actually does feel a lot better! I’m running faster and further with what feels like the same effort. And I don’t know if it’s because of not running in the morning or because I’ve been taking iron for about 3 weeks now, but I’ve been feeling a lot less tired this week, particularly in the afternoons. I’m pretty sure that if it wasn’t for work then I’d have been having frequent post lunch naps for a few months now.

So I’m pleased about this and I’m hoping that my Parkrun times start moving in the right direction… It was a bit underwhelming today, but it was quite hot this morning and I really, really wasn’t feeling it when I started my warm up before hand.

I’ve also been reading up more on iron. The problem with iron isn’t eating it, it’s absorbing it. I already knew that things like tea, coffee, dairy, etc lower absorption. I was also vaguely aware that running is bad for iron levels because the physical impact destroys red blood cells. But what I didn’t know was that workouts cause the release of something called hepcidin, which lowers iron absorption. The hepcidin levels are highest around 3-6 hours after a workout. So on top of dietary iron blockers, you also have to time iron intake around this.

Anyway I have my doctor’s appointment on Tuesday so hopefully I’ll get a blood test to see exactly what my iron levels are.

Progress

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

Despite my lacklustre half marathon performance on Sunday and my suspicion that I might need to take some time off for my hip, I ran down to the doctors yesterday to enquire about my blood test. It turns out that blood test forms expire after 3 months, so the one I had from last August was definitely out. So I have booked a GP appointment (again!) in a couple of weeks and I’ll see about getting another one, and actually having it done this time. Of course by the time it happens I’ll have been on iron tablets for four weeks, but I’ll just have to tell them that when they interpret the results.

So overall, going into the surgery worked a lot better than trying to phone them up. A few years ago I booked a lot of appointments over a period of about 12 months, and usually I would just do it at work by disappearing into the corridor for a couple of minutes. Or I could use the online booking… which is now disabled “because of COVID” (?????). Whereas now it’s at least 30 minutes on hold. I could understand if they had a GP shortage and couldn’t provide enough appointments, because a GP shortage is a hard problem to solve. But I am pretty sure that a shortage of people to answer the phones is not a hard problem to solve. This has been going on for a couple of years now, and every so often the local newspaper picks up on it and prints a scathing article… and nothing changes.

Anyway the running was OK. I was achy but that’s hardly surprising. Then today I went out again and did a 10km tempo, which was neither terrible nor great. My pace was a bit faster than the HM on Sunday, and it was really hot and I’m probably not recovered from Sunday yet, so overall it wasn’t bad, but my energy levels dipped quite a lot around the 8km mark.

I’ve been off work this week so I’ve been entertaining Monty. I took him to the town centre on Tuesday and sat in the square with a drink while he watched everyone walk past. Today we went into a dog friendly cafe and had a drink. He was quite stressed, or maybe just really excited. He was whimpering a bit to start with so I had him sat in my lap and I could feel him panting heavily almost the whole time. It’s funny how he’s so confident and boisterous in his comfort zone, but as soon as you put him in a new situation he’s quite timid. Before we got him, I had no idea dogs could be so expressive with the sounds they make.

HM

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

It turned out that 1:40 wasn’t realistic, and I came in with 1:47. There were some tough hills and my hip started tightening up on the first one, so it wasn’t ideal. But I mostly enjoyed it and I’m not too bothered about the time.

…but the time is a bit of a wake up call that I’m a lot slower than I was a few years ago. 3 years ago I ran a very similar course in 1:32 on roughly the same weekly mileage in training. Plus I did 1:53 on an even harder course last year with virtually no training (which was horrible, but that’s beside the point). So what’s going on here?

I’ve been thinking about it and there is a big difference in now versus then. I used to run most of my miles straight after getting home from work, whereas now I do it first thing in the morning before breakfast. I find running first thing tough and I struggle to hit paces on workout runs that I can hold easily a few hours later in the day. I think this is why my muscles today feel wrecked. Even though I’m putting in the physical effort, my muscles just aren’t being made to work that fast in training runs and they’re not used to going through as wide a range of motion. So I’m going to go back to running later. Something tells me I won’t miss dragging myself round the park at 7AM.

There’s also the issue of iron levels but unfortunately my local GP practice is no longer set up to let people access healthcare 😕 I have a blood test form from last August but I don’t know if 1) it’s still valid, 2) I can still get it done walk-in at the hospital like I used to (I don’t think I still can because of COVID), and if not it means I need an appointment at my GP, which means spending 40+ minutes waiting in a queue on the phone… which I need to do anyway to ask. Actually I’ll probably spend that 40 minutes walking there and back to ask in person. At least that’s more enjoyable than sitting on hold.

PREPARATIONS

~ 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 🌳

~ 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 😕

Life and stuff

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I don’t seem to have done very well with running lately. Actually that’s not entirely true. Two weeks ago I set a post-lockdown Parkrun PB, which I was pleased with (but still over a minute off my pre-lockdown PB!). But in general I feel slow and achy. My hip/groin has been bothering me for a while and last week I somehow strained both hamstrings a few days apart such that they really tightened up and made the back of my knees feel stiff. The groin issue has been getting quite painful at the weekends, with doing a fast Parkrun Saturday mornings and then about 18km on Sundays. The Sunday runs are generally a bit awful, my legs feel like they don’t want to move properly and I get achy in the front of my hips and groin by the end.

Last week I possibly made a breakthrough when I realised that the groin pain is actually groin pain rather than abdominal pain and it hurts when I stretch my adductors. My left adductor was in a real state and I could barely move my leg towards the right across the front of my body. So I keep stretching it and I keep doing cossack squats when I’m at my standing desk, and slowly but surely it hurts a little bit less to stretch. Will that translate to less running pain? We shall see, but I feel optimistic. Will it translate to becoming faster and being in better shape? Doubtful, but maybe.

My sister went to a Ukraine protest at the weekend. It seems kind of pointless to protest against Russia in the UK, but anyway, she did, because she was accompanying her Ukranian friend. The friend was born in and grew up in Kyiv and is very upset about it. I don’t really know what the right thing to do about it all is. People say that direct military intervention would trigger nuclear apocalypse but I think that’s a little bit hysterical. I imagine that a lot of western governments are very pleased that we are weakening the supposed superpower Russia and all we have to do is keep pushing weapons into Ukraine and they’ll sort it out for us, but is that ethical? It’s the Ukranian civilians who are really paying for it and they’d be in a much better position if there were western troops in there.

Every few days a news article pops up about how you can phone Russia or send them emails or text messages and explain to an average Russian citizen what’s going on, but I think that’s pointless at best. Imagine if you got phoned up by someone with a thick accent speaking broken English trying to convince you that he had special insight into your domestic politics. You’d say “errr” and hang up. I used to work with a Russian lady around the time that Russia invaded Ukraine the first time around in 2014 and despite living in the UK she was completely hyped up on Russian nationalism and propaganda. I’m not sure that average Russians are going to be as sympathetic to western messaging as you think…

The whole thing is desperately sad and horrifying.

Groom

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

He went to the groomers yesterday, for the first time. I think he’s feeling cute.

He went in looking a bit shaggy, and he came out looking like a giant bundle of fluff. She’s trimmed the hair on his face but left the length the same on the top of his head, so combined with the blow dry he ended up looking very 80s for a while. She also trimmed the fur around his paws so he looks kind of like he’s trotting around on tip toes. It’s not exactly what I was expecting… But he does look cute!

I don’t think I ever posted an update on my standing desk. I’ve been trying to keep a routine in my work day, which starts off with a run and then shower and breakfast, then a few hours standing at my desk. I like to stand first thing because I’m trying not to let things seize up after running. Then I try to stand again for a while after lunch and for the last part of the day. The non standing periods are sitting in the living room with my laptop to keep an eye on Monty, sat at the desk, or lying on my bed with my laptop depending on how tired I am.

The main things I found are:

  1. It didn’t really help my hip at all, but I worked out that my hip feels a lot better if I stretch my hamstrings. If I feel that annoying ache in my hip then usually a few minutes of hamstring stretching sorts it out. This seems slightly bizarre since the hamstrings are at the back and the ache was at the front and almost into my stomach, but anyway, that’s how it is.
  2. Standing is really tiring! At least to start with, I was feeling a lot more tired and hungry.
  3. Standing makes your bowels more active 😳

These hips don’t lie

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

I had to miss Parkrun last weekend because I strained something in my hip, again. I did it this weekend but I took it a bit slower than usual, and it was still quite uncomfortable Saturday afternoon. I kept waking up during the night and my lower back felt really tight as well.

My hips are soooo tight. I stretch and foam roll but it seems like a losing battle as I sit down all day.

So I took the radical step of investing in a standing desk converter, which is basically a platform that sits on your regular desk that can be raised or lowered back down to desk level.

(Please don’t judge the dust on the right monitor’s base.)

I’m quite impressed with it so far, but I don’t tend to use my PC over the weekends so I haven’t actually tested it in actual use yet. Hopefully it will help!

Life!

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

We’ve had the puppy for almost three weeks now. I never expected owning a puppy to be so stressful! I’m not getting nearly as much sleep as I used to. I keep napping in the evenings after work now.

He is generally doing a lot better now. He has his vaccination booked for next Friday, so a couple of weeks after then we’ll be able to start taking him out for walks. How this is going to work… I have no idea. It’s a struggle to get him to walk from one end of the garden to the other without him trying to eat my shoelaces or chewing on the lead. The lead tends to excite him and he likes to jump up and grab it. I’m a bit concerned about having him walk around much outside because I think he’ll probably try to eat everything he finds, and I’ve noticed the pavements tend to be littered with tiny pebbles and such… so that’ll be fun.

I’d like to get him down to Parkrun at some point so he can see a big crowd of people running but it’s too far for him to walk and with the fuel shortage it’s hard to justify taking him in the car. Maybe in a few weeks.

On the subject of Parkrun… since starting going again, progress has been slower than I thought. I did the first week at about 22:20 and was really pleased with that for a first effort, thinking I’d knock quite a bit of time off it the following week. But I actually got stuck around that time, for a few weeks, before suddenly jumping down to 21:30, where I’m stuck again. Last week was a bit of a struggle, but it was very humid and I’d done two sets of speedwork during the week before. This week I did some 1KM repeats on Wednesday, so hopefully I’ll be well enough rested to see the rewards tomorrow?

The problem is always pacing. It’s a course with an incline at the start, in the middle and at the end, so generally the pace tends to dip in the middle, but I think it’s also the psychological battle of the initial excitement wearing off, fatigue setting in and feeling like a long way from the end. This is the last two weeks:

I obviously still have enough left in me because the last kilometre is always the fastest. But it’s a fine line between taking it a bit too easy in the middle and imploding on the fourth kilometre. I’m still aiming to get it back to about 20 minutes. That feels like a long way away at the moment, though.

Excitement

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

The first big thing is that my sister and I are going to see a lady about a puppy tomorrow. We have been thinking about getting one for a while. This lady (or, more accurately, her dog) has had a litter and there are two still available. They are cockapoos – the little teddy bear like dogs that you see a lot. They’ll be available to leave in about two weeks, which would be perfect because I’m off work that week, but also not perfect because ohmygodthat’ssosoon.

In other news, I did parkrun today, for the first time since March 2020. I ran it in 22:12. With my foot injury I haven’t done many long runs recently, so the half marathon I did a few weeks ago was a bit of a disaster (1:53 – some people would be ecstatic with that, but for me it felt slow and it was a real slog), and I had a weird turn a few hours afterwards where I suddenly felt sick and hot and felt like I was going to faint.

That knocked my confidence a lot for doing anything intense, so I paced it cautiously to begin with and then sped up on the second lap (it’s a two lap course). I haven’t really done any speed workouts for a long time, so overall I was very pleased. When I used to do parkrun regularly before lockdown, I got a lot faster just from treating it as a speed workout every week. It’s a lot easier both psychologically and physiologically to keep a strong tempo going when you’re in a pack of faster runners than it is on your own during the week when you feel like you should still be in bed.

I’m looking forward to next week’s now.