Blue Runnings

I was really pleased with my mega-long run on Sunday, so when Monday rocked around I was really worried to find that the longer P & I bimbled about the Metrocentre, the more my left foot hurt – the outer side was getting worse and worse the longer I walked until when we went back to the car I was almost at a snail’s pace and didn’t really want to put much weight on it. If you look up ‘pain on outer edge of foot’, the search results are pretty unanimous – you’ve either got a stress fracture in the metatarsels or something really obscure. Symptoms of a stress fracture? Doesn’t hurt when resting (check), and gets noticeably worse the longer you put weight on it (check). Symptoms may not appear when the injury first happens but build over the next few days and weeks – foot swelling, increase in amount of pain when walking, etc. etc. Just what one needs when one’s calendar is full of race events and there’s just over 4 weeks to an assault run and just over 8 weeks to a half marathon. Expected recovery time if minor? 6 weeks. No, thank you.

I rested Monday evening and the pain subsided, I woke up Tuesday morning feeling fine, and decided that if it was broken, I would probably know by lunchtime as the pain was likely to build again, or at least so the internet (that most credible source of information) led me to believe. At least in this case, typing my symptoms in didn’t lead to it telling me I died last Thursday. If it did arise, I would go to the walk-in centre after work and see what advice, if any other than ‘rest it’, they could give me. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday all passed with very on-feet days at work, in my heavy steel-toed work boots, and my foot problems didn’t arise again. Monday was looking like a strong possibility in terms of symptoms; Tues, Weds and Thurs definitely not. So, tonight I decided to try a short jog around the Spetchells with J to see how I was holding up, in my shiny new sun visor as it was such a nice bright evening. We went round and up and down and over in a way that typically does not show on the elevation graph – so I get no credit for running up the steps! I got all the way round the 3km very comfortably with no hold ups until we were on the path heading back to the carpark when it spiked me with a ‘Hello! Not forgotten me had you?!’. Bleurgh.

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I knew I wanted to do a long run at some point this weekend, and decided for some reason last night to check the weather forecast, which I don’t usually bother to do as it is what it is. Unfortunately the forecast was for light rain by 11am, heavy rain from 12 until 2pm, then light showers all afternoon until 6pm – so if I wanted my run to have a chance of being dry, it would have to be an early one, and I was still pottering about the internet at 11pm last night. J was looking to do a run this morning, but didn’t want to do the 10 miles-ish I was aiming for, so I suggested that I would leave from Prudhoe, cover the stretch to Wylam road bridge I had done earlier in the week, and then carry on from Wylam down to Newburn on our usual 10k route – J could start from Wylam, and I’d see if I could catch her up.

J met me at Prudhoe to try on my new pink monstrosities and see if she wanted to get a pair for the No Ego challenge next week – we’re going to be trainer buddies for that one! She then popped home to sort some bits out, and then headed down to Wylam – about a 10 minute drive away. I felt much better than I had last time I did the Prudhoe-Wylam leg, when my heart really wasn’t in it, I can’t say I was bubbling with enthusiasm, and the weather didn’t really help – it was very dingy and grey with the promised rain to come, but I felt much lighter and steadier in gait than I had last time and quietly determined to pootle my way around my intended course.

J had kindly parked her car in a very conspicuous place in Wylam carpark so I knew she’d left on her merry way when I reached there, about 25 mins after leaving Prudhoe. The route along to Newburn has some very long straight sections, and I knew from our interval session last time that seeing her in the distance would still take me a while to catch up when I was relying purely on my trot-along pace being about 30 seconds/km quicker than hers – I’d eat the distance up but it wouldn’t be an exciting movie-style fast-paced car chase. Somewhat depressingly, along the first few long straights there was no sign of her – which meant I wasn’t even slowly closing a visible distance! And when she did finally come into sight, there were about 3 different groups of cyclists heading towards me also in neon green or yellow waterproof tops so I couldn’t even be 100% sure that it was J I’d seen – it was, but she was the far distant one and soon after disappeared again around a corner. This was about the time the rain started – fortunately only a minor drizzle, but it didn’t let up for the rest of the run and turned into heavy rain just after I’d gotten back into the car at the end!

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When we first converted the spare room into a gym, I decided I would only buy things as and when I determined that I needed them, rather than trying to fit every exercise accessory under the sun in there and then having them accumulate into a heap and never see the light of day. Recently, I decided that I needed more stuff. Ok, I totally didn’t need it, but more things occurred anyway! The motivators for my shopping spree? Several upcoming things – firstly SUMMER! Followed closely and in some ways superceded by the Gelt Gladiator assault course, and assisted by a side helping of No Ego Trail Challenge. It’s looking very much like the Run England session last week was winter’s last punch – the evenings and nights are still chilly, but the days are looking decidedly bright and warm at the moment – sometimes even consecutively!

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Sometimes I do two blog posts in a day, today is going to be two days in a blog post, and only because I suspect I shall be out again tomorrow and I think three days is too much to catch up, because I would much rather be heading to bed right now!

Yesterday morning was spent panicking only slightly (ok, a lot), about an event I’m signed up for next month of a sort that I haven’t really done before – the Gelt Gladiator near Carlisle, which I’d signed P & I up for earlier in the year when I went on a mad event booking spree! We’re signed up for the 5k, and they’ve just released the course map and the obstacle breakdown – 23 very muddle obstacles over 6km instead of the original 5km – so as well as an insane number of obstacles, they’ve thrown an extra km in too! There’s some rather unpleasant things in there, like the ice plunge pool and the electric shock dash of doom, which will be horrible, but I’m actually more concerned about the large walls and clamber things. My legs are strengthening up nicely with all the running and jumping about I make them do, but upper body strength is something in which I am sorely lacking and the prospect of atttempting to heave myself up extremely muddy ramps after doing 5.5km through the cold and mud is looking extremely daunting right now.

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