Gently Does It

It is dark. It is cold. The streetlights cast shadows on the pavements and the road. It is damp. There is a light mist of rain in the air. There are few people about. Christmas lights on trees sparkle from warm living rooms. Outdoor decorations bring life to the darkened streets. And I am out. And I am running.

Not far. Not fast. I feel very tentative. Each footstep is carefully planted. Each yard I move forward is logged in my brain. Every pothole or uneven surface of the road or pavement is eyed warily. This is the first time I have been out running since injuring my ankle and foot back at the start of December. This is not the time to take risks. This is not the time to push it. This is not the time to set the recovery back.

This is the time to be careful. This is the time to ignore the watch. This is the time to take it easy. This is the time to trust that I have not lost all of my fitness. This is the time to focus on the journey ahead. The time to focus on four months time and getting in shape to run the Rotterdam Marathon in April. It is not about running it next week.

Right foot with strapping on, but at least I was back out

Having got through that first run, still with my ankle strapped up, and felt not too bad, it has been a case of slowly building the distance. Two miles the first run, three miles the second, four miles the third. Each one has helped the confidence. Each one has helped restore the fitness a little bit more.

But it is not linear progress. It is not as simple as just adding a bit more distance every time and getting fitter and quicker. I wish it was, but it is not. Progress is up and down. Progress is steps forward and steps back. Progress is taking all of that into consideration and recognising that each run is part of the process of recovery.

Running with friends Jeanette and Susan

But running, for me at least, is much more than physical fitness, important though that is. It is about friends. It is about supporting each other. It is about kindred spirits who share the same joy for running and who you enjoy being in their company and spending time with. It is about helping each other through the tough parts of running.

“this is not the time to panic”

And so after a couple of runs on my own, my other runs over the past week or so have been with friends. Not all have been further than the previous one. Not all have felt as good as the first one. That is just to be expected and I need to remind myself of that constantly. Not running at all for around three weeks, combined with travelling for work and of course the indulgences of the festive period are all going to take their toll. I need to tell myself that this is all ok, that this is all fine. This is not the time to panic about how I am feeling about my fitness.

I have made it up to 10km distance but that run was a real struggle, a reminder that running is hard, really hard, and that there is a massive way for me to go in order for me to reach the finish line of the Rotterdam on April 16. On previous times when I have started a marathon training block, I have felt in much better shape than I do now, so the way back is to re-calibrate my expectations for these initial weeks and just be grateful that I am able to run at all. Many others are not as fortunate.

“a time to rest up a bit”

Given the year that I have had – injured in January, then six races (marathon, four half marathons and one 10km) stretching from March through to November – December was always planned as a time to rest up a bit, though of course not as much as I have ended up doing. As it coincided with work travel and also the coldest December in ten years, to be frank, I probably could not have chosen a better time to have a few weeks off.

I need to take all the positives I can from the rest. It has given both my body and mind an opportunity to heal; to recover from the rigours of the previous ten months and to re-set. But that is hard to do once you start running again, as you spend most of your time thinking,”jeez, why am I so unfit”!!

But that time is in the past now and it is now the case of focusing on the positives. Friends, fresh air, gorgeous views, the return of the physical fitness that has seeped away, the mental health benefits of just getting off the sofa and getting out to enjoy the local environment. Aberdeen is a great place to run, though the streets around my house have a monotonous familiarity about them, so a great thing about marathon training is stretching that distance and running in places I only get to when I am back into the big miles. Something to look forward to, even in the depths of winter.

The other good thing is that for Christmas I got a new pair of running shoes. Having used Reebok this year,I have decided to go back to Brooks Ghosts, the shoe which I have used for most of the past few years. While the Reeboks were very comfortable, I do feel they became a bit spongy, so while I will contine to use them for shorter distances, it is the Ghosts which I hope will get me round the longer distances ahead.

Those days are in the future, but not too far off. It is time to dig out the marathon training plan once more. It is time to consider doing things differently. Let’s see what the next few weeks bring. For the moment, I am just thankful to be running again, to be with friends and to be on the road to recovery. I know it will be bumpy ahead, but at least the journey has begun.

Here I Go Again

“Ach, it is not too bad”. If I could pick a phrase which sums up how I have felt for so much of this year, then that would be it. But no more. Another injury has made me finally realise that “it is not too bad” is not really a sustainable strategy for the long term.

Regular readers will know that shortly before I ran the Falkirk Half Marathon a few weeks back, I injured my foot and ankle while sorting out the wheelie bins in our street. Despite that, I went ahead and did the race, finishing without incident, and since then have been back to my regular running schedule.

Adopting the attitude that “it’s not too bad”has got me through a lot. I think many runners run with some pain somewhere along the way, and in fact, getting used to enduring pain is part of the process of either running faster or running further. It is not called endurance running for nothing.

“opportunity to fully rest”

In 2022, however, I started the year with an injury and it looks like I will end it with an injury too. It is the same foot which I have hurt, though in slightly different places. At the start of the year, it was my ankle which was in pain, having trod in a pothole on an early morning run between Christmas and New Year. Having overcome that, and got through all of my races this year, this injury has given me a chance to reflect and a genuine opportunity to fully rest and ensure I truly recover this time, rather than just get through one run after another.

The injury happened when I was out running with my JogScotland friends earlier in the week. I had felt a couple of twinges in my ankle when I was running on Tuesday, but that had come very late on in the run and I had no concerns to run again on Thursday night. I had been wearing an ankle support on Tuesday, but chose not to on Thursday as I felt the support itself was causing a bit of pain in my heel.

“hanging on”

As we passed the three mile mark of our 10km run, we were running along a pavement when my foot just gave way on a bit of uneven paving. A variety of expletives later, and I was hanging on to a piece of railing next to a pedestrian crossing, unable to put any weight on my foot. The pain was not in my ankle, but on the inside of my right foot, running from my sole up to the bone on that part of the foot.

My initial reaction, once I stopped swearing, was to think “ach, it is not too bad”, and consider carrying on with the run. But it was instantly obvious that that was not a realistic prospect. So a phone call to my wife was in order to ask her to come and pick me up and the run was abandoned there and then. And at this point, I have no idea when I may run again.

“a total fool”

The ironic thing is, by the morning after, I was thinking, once again, “ach, it is not too bad”, as my hobble around the house was not as pronounced as it had been the night before, and in my running addled brain, I began to consider whether a little runnet might be in order. Then I realised what a total fool I was being.

Now is the time to rest and recover, the thing I would say to anyone else in the same situation. Now is the time to genuinely put my feet up. Now is the time to take it easy, and allow not just my foot to recover, but to allow both my body and my brain to truly get over the exertions of this year, and to get ready for 2023. My other fear is that If I do not rest this properly this time around, then I am running the risk of getting into a downward spiral of injury after injury which could potentially end me running at all.

I still have Rotterdam Marathon as my goal race for 2023 in the middle of April, and with the Inverness Half Marathon as a stepping stone towards that in March, and so if I rest now and resume training at the start of the year then that would give me around fourteen weeks to prepare for Rotterdam which is definitely achievable. It is slightly daunting to see people already training for Spring marathons, but I need to trust that these next few weeks, when walking will be my only main exertion, that taking it easy now will truly benefit me later.

“a version of maranoia”

This does not come naturally to me. Though I value rest days so much when I am training, to have rest day after rest day, with no training inbetween, does not feel natural. This might be a version of maranoia – that feeling of paranoia when you are tapering before a big race – except this time it is coming not in the days in advance of getting to the start line, but in advance of the training regime actually beginning at all.

Now the plan is to strap up the ankle, keep it elevated as much as I can, walk a little bit, perhaps do some strength training as the weeks move on, but with one fundamental. No running. And what will be the deciding factor when I feel I can run again? When I no longer think, “ach, it is not too bad”, but actually think, “this feels really good”. Let’s hope that feeling is only a few weeks away.