Rob's Running Blog

First Run of Winter, As the Summer ends…

Well, British Summer Time officially ended at 2am, so thought it was high time I kick started my running and blog again!

The day after the City of Salford 10k, I woke up hardly able to walk. There was no sign the previous day, apart from a twinge half way through the race – nothing afterwards, no sign. And then I was suddenly hobbling around wincing as pain shot up from my left lower leg/shin.

This lasted a good while, in the meantime I took up swimming, which was a nice change and a way of keeping up some fitness. After a few weeks the pain subsided, but I was very wary of running again, and wanted to make sure the running injury was fully healed, being unable to afford physiotherapy for running injuries at the moment! Before I knew it, 2 months had passed and the clocks were going back, so seeing as it was a nice day, quite bright, and not too cold, and I got up too late to go to the pool anyway, I thought I would try a run!

Didn’t feel like almost November, so put shorts on and my long sleeve thin top, and went out to let the Garmin wake up from its 2 month doze, which took a while. Set off and within 200 metres a little dog tried to savage my legs and trip me up with its lead, which was quite funny, and then I settled into a slow pace and just felt curious about how I would feel.

At 2k I felt confident of being able to run 5k, and perhaps even in under 30 minutes. By 2.5k I had to stop and walk, and then kind of stop started for the next 1.5k until I ran the last 500 metres until staggering to a stop, gasping for air and with my legs feeling like jelly!

Gosh it took a while to recover from this comeback! 4k in 27:19, with walks. At least I felt the swimming had maintained some fitness, but even thought I’ve been swimming up to 70 lengths and doing multiple front crawl lengths, nothing seems as pulse-raising and generally knackering as running! Hopefully I will get back into the swing of it, but will continue to mix in the swimming for now.

Meanwhile I had a blood test a few weeks ago, and the results were that my cholesterol is fine, my liver is fine, my kidneys are fine, my blood pressure is fine, and I have a less than 2% chance of dying from heart disease in the next 10 years… At the same time, I have put weight on since I stopped drinking and started running 4 years ago, but think this may be down to consuming entire packets of custard creams after runs – I thought the running would allow me to get way with this, alas not, so I will be paying a little more attention to my diet in future, and the running and swimming will be part of a whole holistic health package.

Meanwhile, my counselling course is going fantastically well and I can’t wait to qualify and maybe even earn some cash, which is in short supply!

Happy Running!