Running On Empty

Hexham, it turns out, is pretty hilly. It also has lots of walls and fences and stuff that mean some things can be the long way round, even when the control's... just there . Course #2, for Veteran Men and Open Women. Open to what, I'm not sure.  😳 Beyond that, I'm really not sure what I want to write about today. My toe felt a bit off from the off. It was bloomin' cold. The pins and needles I got when my fingers and thumbs finally warmed up was something else. I got absolutely left for dead by a guy doing the same course who started a minute behind me. Just under halfway round, I felt a strain in my back, on the right hand side, which feels more like a karting injury than a running one. (Great timing too, as I have karting coming up this Wed evening! 🙄) Oh, and I ended up 6th out of 9 finishers (though 10 entrants) in my age group, with a time of 52:51, a full 08:51 behind the winner. So, it doesn't feel like I was very fast, but at least today I don't think ...

While my knees and toe probably would've preferred more bike work, I was working in the office today, so went out for a short run at lunch instead. Given I didn't want to aggravate the toe too much in advance of Sunday's orienteering, I went for a fairly flat route. I also just wanted to get away from people and be somewhere calmer than the centre of Newcastle on the run-up to Christmas. Today's route took me past the Black Gate, then under the railway line and onto Forth Street behind the station. It was around this point that the gentle rain turned into a downpour and I was glad I'd put my fleece on. 😂 The rain continued on and off as I jogged past the Centre for Life and onwards to the Arena. The new phone wasn't giving me announcements of my progress (yet another thing to set up), but a quick check showed I'd been going about 7 minutes. From the Arena, it was rapidly downhill to the Tyne before turning upriver. The tide must've been in, ...

Indoor cycling? On a running blog? What am I thinking?! Well, firstly, with a lack of running, there's a lack of content keeping this blog alive. And a lack of content makes me feel like the hobby's dying, which I don't want. But secondly, when I looked up plantar fasciitis, one of the recommendations from running websites was to do more cross-training while it sorts itself out. Something with less heel impact, like cycling or swimming. So... I dusted off the lockdown bike . It's always a bit boring being sat in one place with one view the whole time, so I stuck YouTube on the telly and watched a 4-year-old video from the Two Wheel Cruise channel where they  ascended Mount Norikura  in Japan. I've always enjoyed that channel, especially when they get it into the countryside. Check it out of you're bored with your exercise bike. The bike feels easier these days than it used to in lockdown, so I rattled off half-an-hour-plus on level 6. It actually has...

So, as I said in the previous, hurried post , written at about 8:55am in the leisure centre car park in Morpeth, today was about taking it easy. My left heel had had about 16 hours of feeling ok-ish after a week of plantar fasciitis pain and the second toe on the same foot was (and is) still giving the same grief that it has for over a month now. So... best not to get sucked into going for a good time, in the way I did last weekend at Tyne Green. Which, incidentally, was also my last run — no midweek running for now. Today, I planned to go for a time somewhere between 30 and 35 minutes. Hopefully toward the upper end of that range. Actually planning to do that also meant that I didn't mind getting my slowest ever non-volunteer time. I also hoped it would mean that I enjoyed it more. Looking across to Carlisle Park after it starting chucking it down, post-run Setting off from the back of the pack, I settled into an easy jog. At times, running behind people, it felt a little too ea...

For the record slowest solo parkrun time, that is. I am parkrunning today, but I intend to do a slow one because of my injuries. Genuinely slow. Maybe even walking. Need to say that before I set off, to commit myself. Here goes...

Ugh. If it's not one thing, it's another. 🙄 No lunchtime run today, as my left foot started really hurting under the heel yesterday. Given it started a whole day after the parkrun, I didn't initially think it was linked, but a quick google and I now suspect it's plantar fasciitis , which apparently eases during exercise, but comes back later. Yep, that fits. The NHS page also reckons I shouldn't walk barefoot (or, I guess, in thin socks?) on hard floors. Ooops. That's exactly what I've been doing to try to avoid getting dependent on soft shoes indoors (which was a problem with my toes last year). Hey ho. The shoes are back on, then. Anyway, all of this has persuaded me not to go for a run. But mybe I'll dust off the exercise bike later, who knows. I just hope it doesn't take an age to resolve itself. 🙁

Good god, that hurt. As soon as I crossed the finish line today, I knew I had to start this blog post with those 4 words. Despite the parkrun at Tyne Green (Hexham) being almost completely flat, I half killed myself getting a time of 26:20. In fact, I went pretty light-headed as I finished, showing how much I'd pushed myself. I guess this is the price you pay for the best part of a month with no running. Other factors in play today were the cold (4°C) and a not-quite-right chest (wheezing and a hacking cough after finishing). But while the lungs in particular struggled today, it's fair to say the whole body joined them in that. And the cold weather really didn't help, with my toes going numb and my hands cold the whole way round; it was only when I reached out for my token at the end that I saw that the bottom end of every finger and thumb had turned blue. 😮 The pins and needles coming back from that were something else. So... maybe I'll wear more than just a t-shirt ...

So, a first run back that wasn't just stop-start. And given my phone was sucking the last bits of juice it would ever suck (thanks to a broken charging port), I was running without anything telling me how far I'd gone, what pace, or even what time it was. With that in mind, any sensible person would've run a route whose distance they know well. But I'm not any sensible person. Yep, that was a gradient. Heading out of the office and onto Grey Street, I ran up to Grey's Monument and then up towards Gallowgate. Seeing the towering (for Newcastle) skyline of the science/business park, I then figured I might head up there and weave around in the hope of meeting a former colleague who's just moved there, but that didn't last long. Instead, I ran alongside the old town walls for as far as they were discernible, which took me down to Westgate Road, opposite Tilley's and the Tyne Theatre and Opera House . Cue a hard right, heading up Westgate Road as I sensed th...

What a n00b. 🙄 So yeah, I finally got back to the orienteering today, and made yet another of my trademark schoolboy errors in my navigation. At least, it certainly feels like that's what lets me down. Today's course — the blue course, which is one step down from the usual hardest/longest brown course — included something I'd not seen before: the same control being used more than once. So, at different times, you'll exit that control in different directions. Stupid me didn't even notice that, so my first exit from control #3 saw me running off directly for control #7 rather than control #4. Idiot. 🤦‍♂️ 7.84km around the housing estates of Cramlington, including the odd unnecessary detour Once I checked into #7 and saw that its number didn't match what I was expecting, there was a good chunk of me standing around feeling very confused, double-checking the number on both the control descriptions and the control itself, before looking back at the previous control...

Impatience got the better of me in the end. With the toe still hurting when I walk around in stocking feet — 3 or 4 weeks after injuring it — I just came to the conclusion that I might just have to get back to running with an injury. It's effectively what I did through most of the Couch to 5K in the first place; it's just of not had to  since getting the Brooks trainers. 😐 So, with the orienteering on Sunday looming, I took to the streets of Newcastle for the first time in ages; call it a shakedown test, consisting of walk-run-walk-run-walk. Each running bit was probably about a mile. I guess I did around 3km of running overall. Long time since I last saw myself reflected here in running gear And... it felt okay. Actually, it felt really quite weird at first (it's been so long!) and the toe started out with a few complaints, but both the weirdness and pain soon dissipated. Of more note perhaps was how unfit I felt. I was expecting a time for the first kilometre — w...