Trouble A-foot

The recovery from my foot injury is going slowly but surely. I was able to run for a mile and a half last night, though the foot still needs more rest. At times it felt like I was dragging my bad foot behind me like a deadweight. Obviously I need more time for the foot to heal, but I am quietly hopeful that it will improve and I will be able do some more training before the marathon takes place. The next time I train, I will try and up the distance to two miles, then five miles after that, and then on to ten miles and hopefully fifteen or twenty, and I should be back on form again.

I am a bit conflicted though. I have got to let this foot recover, but I can't go too long without training this close to the main event, even though you are supposed to taper down the training at this stage. I'm doing everything possible to expedite my recovery. I am regularly pressing ice packs against my foot, running the foot under a scalding hot shower and using tonnes and tonnes of Deep Heat (confidentially, that stuff really stinks). I don't know if any of the above is actually making a difference but I'll try anything to accelerate my recovery. Painkillers, alternative medicine, praying to Him Upstairs, whatever works.
Anybody got any suggestions?
Anybody?
Anyone?
God?

Injury Time

My fears have been confirmed and I am down, injured.

I went to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, to the Accident and Emergency department while it was quiet at work (yes, I got permission from my manager!). Surprisingly I only had to wait for about half an hour to be seen. Say what you like about the NHS. It’s a mess but the staff, doctors, nurses, porters, et cetera, do a creditable job under extremely difficult circumstances.

I was called in by the doctor. I had rather a lot of difficulty trying to understand what he was saying. He had a very strong accent. I am not sure what accent he spoke in. It was probably Eastern European but for all I know, it could have been South African. You know, I can’t even tell a Scots accent from an Irish one.

To cut a long story short, the doctor told me that I had tendonitis. Or tendinitis. I’ve seen both spellings. I’m not sure which is correct. It refers to the tendon, so surely tendonitis should be the spelling to employ. The doctor said that I should rest my foot, carry on walking as normal, and it should be healed in a week or two. Or at least, that is what I think I heard him say.

As things stand, I can feel my foot slowly getting better, in that it’s nowhere near as painful to walk and I’m no longer walking ‘funny.’ I hope the recovery is a speedy one, but I will have to take care not to jump back into the running too soon, otherwise I risk aggravating the situation. My cousin made the valid point that perhaps the injury has come at the right time: with a month to go until the marathon, I should be winding down the training. You are supposed to cut down on your training a few weeks before the marathon, and as I have already done the bulk of my training, my situation is perhaps not too dire.

The whole thing has shaken me and affected my confidence a little. It has made me realise that I am not apparently indestructible after all and that I have to watch myself a bit more. I’ve subsequently had to pull out of the Brentwood half-marathon that I was planning to run, which is disappointing (that’s twenty quid I’ll never get back!) but I’m hopeful and positive that all will be well come the marathon itself in a month’s time. I’ve trained too hard for too long to see it all come to nothing. I will run that marathon and cross the finish line, come hell or (more relevantly, given recent circumstances in the Far East) high water.

Scrambled Aches

It looks like my 'off day' the other day was just that, an 'off day.' A mere, trivial, inconsequential little blip. From an off day to a day off, yesterday I was on leave from work, trying to use up my remaining annual leave before the end of the financial year.

I spent most of yesterday in the gym. This was the Esporta in Repton Park, or as I prefer to call it "the gym and health centre for people with more money than sense." I'm not a fan of gymnasia(?? Gymnasiums??) in general, probably due to my own little insecurities meaning that inevitably I'm going to be comparing myself unfavourably to other, fitter members of the gym, despite the fact that I think I am relatively fit and have a nice body as it currently is. I dislike this gym in particular because the membership fees are tantamount to extortion and can't fathom for the life of me why anybody would be willing to pay such silly money for a yearly membership. (Fortunately I had a free day pass so I took advantage of it and didn't have to pay a single penny.) Granted, it is a very nice looking gym, and the swimming pool is lovely. In fact, I think it is because of that lovely swimming pool that the prices are so steep. Perhaps there's nothing inherently wrong with the gym and I just have an irrational loathing of gyms.

Anyway, back on topic, aside from doing some bicep curls and shoulder presses, I ran on the treadmill for an hour, and although the silly treadmill only measured my distance in kilometres, I think that I must have run for about seven miles, give or take. Hopefully I am back on form. Despite the air conditioning in the room, I was completely drenched in my own sweat by the end of my little stint on the treadmill. Never, in all my months of running have I managed to sweat so profusely. You could have wrung entire buckets full of water out of my sweaty shirt and bottled the stuff up as L'eau de Martin. I am actually rather impressed that I ran on the treadmill for an hour since it is extraordinarily odd for me to be able to run on the same spot for such a long time. Normally I dislike treadmills because you are essentially running on the same spot for ages, and despite listening to music or looking at the TV screens in front of you, it is still a very boring activity, just running and not actually going anywhere. Maybe I misjudged the humble treadmill and perhaps I will use one more often in the future, instead of taking to the streets all the time.

I also did a short run this evening as part of my regular training (four miles). At the end of the run, I felt a dull pain in my right foot. Actually, it wasn't quite the foot. It wasn't the ankle either. It was somewhere in the lower leg, approaching the foot, but isn't the foot or the ankle. I'm not a specialist in podiatry so I have no idea what the problem is but it is giving me cause for concern and I do hope it heals up soon, preferably before this half-marathon on Sunday. To be frank, I'm quite surprised that it has taken me this long to injure myself again. I thought it would happen much sooner. I am crossing my fingers, toes, and any other body part that can reasonably be crossed, in the hope that everything will soon be all right. So for now, plenty of rest for this foot of mine.

I won't get all melodramatic about my foot ("Woe is me!" "Why do bad things always happen to me?" et cetera, et cetera) because, to put things in perspective, thousands of people have been killed in an earthquake and tsunami in Japan, so to complain about my foot with all this tragedy going on seems downright petulant and perverse at best.

Decline and Fool

I feel a bit disappointed with myself. Yesterday I ran “only” 15 miles. I had wanted to do more. I would have been happy with 18 miles or 20 miles but I could only manage 15. I hadn’t been feeling right all day as it happens, but I’m still disappointed with myself. Maybe it was because I hadn’t drank one of those energy sports drinks or eaten a banana beforehand but I just did not have the energy to go further than 15 miles. Also, my foot started to hurt a bit at some point during the run. I don’t really know what it was, but it felt like the life and energy had been sucked right out of me. I wanted to keep on running, maybe do another three miles and make it to 18 miles, but forgive me readers, I just couldn’t take any more.

I am getting a bit worried though. Maybe I am mentally or physically “taking my foot off the gas” and getting complacent. It seems a bit typical with me. I usually suffer some sort of mental stumbling block with the winning post in sight. Events somehow conspire to deny me what is seemingly within reach. Is this just a little setback, an ‘off day,’ a rare lapse in my otherwise impressive training, or is this the start of a decline?

On the other hand, perhaps I should feel proud of myself that despite clearly having an ‘off day,’ I still managed to run 15 miles.

A Run For Your Money

The training for the London Marathon continues unabated. On Sunday 20th March, I shall be taking part in another half-marathon, this time in Brentwood, Essex. As with the half-marathon I’ve just completed, this will no doubt help me adapt to race conditions and get used to running alongside other runners, male and female, fast and slow, etcetera, etcetera.

I have, up to now, managed to run a staggering 21 miles in a single training session. In theory, I could stand to run more miles, but I think this would be bordering on the excessive, not to mention the insane. It takes me about three hours (and a bit) to get to 20 miles when I’m at the top of my game, so running any longer than this in a single go is really rather unnecessary, and crucially, not recommended by the experts.

Part of me wants to try and train for the whole 26 miles beforehand, just to prove that I can actually run the distance of the marathon, but perhaps this would be a tad foolish. If I can run for 20 miles, I should be able to run another 6 on top of that. I don’t quite know how exactly. I expect the adrenaline will be keeping me going those last few miles. That and the encouragement of the spectators in the street. I am quietly confident that I will manage it.

So you see, the training is going very well indeed. As far as the fundraising is concerned, that’s going quite well as well. I have raised very nearly £1000 of my target of £2000, so I am almost halfway there. I knew that running for 26 miles would be an extraordinarily challenging task, but it seems that equally as challenging is the fundraising. I’m extremely grateful for the sponsorship that I have received so far and I am quietly confident (again!) that more donations will trickle in as the day of the marathon approaches.

Part of me feels a little guilty in pressurising and pestering people to part with their hard-earned cash so I will have to be a little more proactive. It's got to be done; the fundraising is an important part of my marathon attempt. There's nothing like being forced to pay £10 so that someone you vaguely know can run two dozen miles in the middle of the biggest bloody recession the country's had in years.

Simply the Vest

I received a certain something in the post yesterday. It was my RNID running vest. It’s a lovely yellow and turquoise, and it fits rather well.

I plan to put my name on the vest. I don’t know whether I will use a marker pen or get it printed on professionally. The latter sounds rather expensive, I would have thought. Either way, it will be a great feeling to hear the crowd shouting out my name. Whether they’re shouting nice things ("come on Martin!") or nasty things ("eff off Martin!") remains to be seen.

I shall wear it and wash it a few times so that I get used to running in it on the day. There can’t be anything more annoying and inconvenient than wearing something on the day that you have never run in before, that will itch and chafe.

Also received in the post were some “essential information fact sheets” including maps and directions for what are known as “cheering points” and a reception after the race for me and my supporters to enjoy the day.

The tension is building. It’s getting closer now. Receiving that vest has more or less brought home to me the magnitude of what I’m about to do. I really am going to do this thing. I hope.

 

Here’s a few pictures of the vest. And yes, that is my living room carpet.

 So you should be able to recognise me on April 17th. I'll stick out a mile in those colours.

If Music Be The Food of Love, Jog On

Stomped the pavements of Woodford, Essex once again. Sometimes I enjoy the training because it is a way of winding down after a hard day’s work at the office and it is a chance for me to forget about all my petty little troubles and just be at one with nature and the world, etcetera, etcetera.

I often run without wearing my hearing aid (okay, it’s a cochlear implant. I won’t insult the intelligence of my readers). Sometimes it’s nice to run in complete silence. It’s nice and tranquil. Silence is golden. As the Tremeloes sang (or rather, the Four Seasons, as they did it first) .Without being disturbed by the sound of traffic, I am able to focus properly on my running. It’s just me and miles and miles of pavement.

On a longer run, though, especially when running for more than an hour, it helps to have something to listen to in order to keep me motivated. To that end, I’ll take my MP3 player out with me and listen to some music while on the run.

My choice of running music tends to be based on the clichés. We’ve got We Are The Champions by Queen, Physical by Olivia Newton-John, Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor, Keep On Running by the Spencer Davis Group, Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen, and so on. You get the general idea – songs about exercise, achievement, winning, being victorious, running, and such like. Not particularly original, but effective nevertheless.
Unfortunately, when you’re going for long runs, these songs tend to repeat themselves so I decided to add a few other songs to the mix but ran out of ideas and rather lazily stuck on my MP3 player any song that had the word ‘run’ in the title. So Runaway by Del Shannon is on there. Band On The Run is on there. As are Runaround Sue, Running Bear and Candi Staton’s number two hit from 1976, Young Hearts Run Free.
Sadly that still wasn’t enough to sustain several hours’ worth of running so I extended the playlist to include any reference to walking. So The Police’s 1979 chart-topper Walking On The Moon is on there, along with Walk Of Life, These Boots Are Made For Walkin,’ Walk Like An Egyptian, Walk Like A Man and The Searchers’ When You Walk In The Room. OK, so it’s not the best playlist ever but it seems to do the trick.

I might vary the theme a little bit. If I’m going on a run that involves going up hills, I’ll have something like Ain’t No Mountain High Enough or Top of the World just to motivate me that little bit further. It is amazing how what you hear can really spur you on. I feel that a lot of people take their hearing for granted. That is partly why I'm supporting the Royal National Institute for the Deaf when I do those 26.2 miles. To raise awareness, not just awareness of deafness, but the causes of deafness. More people are experiencing problems with their hearing than ever before. It's not simply because of an aging population but overexposure to loud noises, particularly loud music, and especially from personal stereos and iPods and MP3 players. I feel specifically that younger people are a bit blasé when it comes to that sort of thing, and don't realise the damage that they are doing to their hearing before it's too late. Even though my hearing has never been good, my cochlear implant has allowed me to hear things that I never would have heard before and since then, I have really begun to appreciate music. It's surprising how much music can affect your mind and your mood, and it certainly can help. Most of the time, anyway.

My MP3 player has been on the fritz recently and the battery life doesn’t seem to last quite as long as it once did. Last week I couldn’t even turn it on (that’s “turn on” as in “to cause to begin the operation of,” and not “to incite sexual arousal”) so my mum kindly let me borrow her iPod on the condition that I brought it back with me in one piece. Usually everything I touch doesn’t last long without me breaking it. I don’t like having to fiddle around with the playlist once I’ve started running. I just like to switch it on and start running. As I quite like a lot of the music my mum listens to (I do have a weakness for the classics), I was happy to use her iPod for a couple of hours. Anything to keep me going on an arduous run. It was pretty good, as I remember. Quite a lot of upbeat stuff on there. ABBA are always good to run to. Even Phil Collins got me going, somehow encouraging me to run even faster than I already was. Then suddenly, Paper Roses by Marie Osmond comes on and that just put me right off my stride. Try as I might, I just couldn’t run to that song.


So, I like running in complete silence, but I also like running to music. But which is better?

I guess it doesn’t really matter. When I run the London Marathon, I shan’t be listening to music. However, I won’t go without my cochlear implant. I will let the voices of the spectators spur me on. That should be motivational enough for me. If hearing the words “come on Martin!” ad infinitum doesn’t work, then I don’t know what will.


So I won’t be listening to the sound of music, nor will it be the sound of silence, but the sound of the crowd.