It's been a while...

It's rather embarrassing that I haven't posted here in over a month. When I started this blog, I wanted to add to it on a weekly basis and give an accurate portrayal of the up and downs of my running experiences. Seeing as it's meant to be plotting my build-up to the Sheffield Half, a month-long gap renders it somewhat redundant.

My main reason for being absent for so long is the depressing reappearance of last year's knee injury. Although posting about it would have provided a potentially engaging tragi-narrative, the idea of penning some darkly frustrated diatribe about the perils of overpronation and over-training, filled me with gloom. What happened was this: after feeling a number of twinges here and there on recent outings, I decided to stop short while out on a run a few weeks weeks ago due to an intense pain in my knee. Much to the despair of my grumbling but loyal housemate, this premature halt came about 2 miles from home. I was forced to hobble back to my abode in the chilly wind, lamenting my problematic joints and my propensity for over-training.

Aware that the Half itself was approaching, I declared a halt to my regular runs and decided to 'rest up' for an indefinite amount of time. I wanted to keep up my regular routine using my bike which i'd recently re-acquired from my parents' home in the south. Although this at first seemed to offer an effective alternative, I discovered that I had very few moments of daylight to take to the roads.

So, in all honesty, my cardiovascular exercise has been decidedly lacking of late. It's worrying how quickly the addictiveness of exercise dissipates and the routine of lounging around becomes the norm. In truth, i've missed the natural high of getting back from a run and have worried about the inevitable decline in my performance as a result of this hiatus, but it's been a little 'too easy' just to stop it all.

So, last Thursday I decided to take the plunge and went out for my first run in 3 weeks. Running a course of laps around a couple of local parks (mainly so I wasn't too far from home in case the injury once again erupted) I set my iPod to shuffle and went for it as best I could. I was unsure how far I was going to run, but I wanted to test myself over a fairly long distance so as to make sure my knee would at least be bearable on the day itself. I ended up running 12 miles and my knee remained fine throughout. My general performance was also far better than I expected, aside from the crippling cramp I suffered in the last couple of miles and the general sense of fatigue I felt at the end.

Still, I'm now confident that I can at least complete the Half without having to engage in some heartbreaking scene of foulmouthed bailout at the side of the road. It's amazing what some rest can do.

Snow Away

The passing days have seen the snow lingering rather longer than I’d like. My ski-slope-like street has insisted on maintaining an awkward balance of gritted, mostly dry concrete and the thickest, most compacted ice I’ve ever seen. I got back home late last night and, realising that the sharp incline of pavement from street to house was slicked with a film of freezing water, was forced onto all-fours. Distressingly, I’d spotted an idle smoker leaning from an illuminated window a few moments before. He presumably witnessed the sorry episode as I flailed around on hands-and-knees in an undignified moment of hopelessness.

I’ve managed 3 runs this week (after a week’s break due the conditions) and they’ve all involved some manner of trudging through snow and ice. This hasn’t actually been as bad as I perhaps feared, although steeper hills do tend to feel like, as my housemate put it, ‘running up the travellator in Gladiators’. As the feet search for grip where there isn’t any, there’s a fairly frustrating feeling that you’re not really getting up the road as quickly as you should. The conditions didn’t stop one of my running-mates tearing off at high speed through a snow drift on a gruelling seven-miler we completed yesterday. As we thumped down a particularly sharp hill, I felt myself concentrating on form and balance more than I ever have while running before. In a sense, this takes the mind off the fatiguing aspects of the enterprise, but it also feels like you’re about to go careering under the nearest car.

Amidst all the snow fun of last week, I managed to join the gym on some kind of off-peak deal. This means I have to go in the morning before I head to my University department, but I can now drop certain runs if my shins/knees start giving me a hard time again. Good news on that: the legs seem to have returned to their former glory after a week’s break.

Anyway, time to head out in search of fish and chips. All this talk of exercise is making me hungry…

Snow Business

Like the rest of the nation, everyone’s gone a bit crazy about the snow in Sheffield. Thanks to the sharp gradient of the city’s hills, buses, cars and people appear to be sliding around/getting stranded/generally finding things difficult.

Perhaps understandably, although it was ‘scheduled’, I didn’t run last night as the snow, which had ground London to a halt earlier in the day, journeyed upward to torment those residing in the North. I guess I did get a bit of exercise, as at 11:00 my house and I embarked on a guerrilla offensive on a number of crazed snowballers below. As they hid behind cars and other assorted objects, we covertly projected lumps of snow gathered from window frames and roof tiles from an attic bedroom. It was a frenzied half an hour as those gathered below, at first confused by the attack from above, began to hoist chunks of snow up at our open window. There was lots of running up and down stairs and general adrenaline-fuelled activity, so let’s just say I did a couple of miles and be done with it.

As for my actual running, I have been having further issues with my legs. After resting for a few days, my knees (or top of my shins, I can’t quite work it out) began to hurt again after a number of miles on the concrete. It’s an incredibly frustrating feeling to want to run and not be able to. But it’s something, after last year’s ridiculousness, I’m determined to treat with care and consideration this time. So, this morning, I headed along to the gym and signed up. While there’s no real replacement for road running in training terms (the treadmill somehow fails to emulate the more draining aspects of ‘pounding the pavement’), I can at least replace some of my runs with other cardio activity. I’ll see how this goes, anyway…

All this snow is therefore a good excuse to rest the joints. When it melts, I’ll try the streets again and see how it feels.

Rest Day

Training has been going well in the last week or so. I actually managed a ‘hang-over run’ on Saturday morning, which was something of a revelation. Trudging 5 miles in a dehydrated lethargy was not the most pleasant of activities, but seeing as I usually view the weekend as an excuse to let go of any pretence of physical exercise or healthy eating, it made a nice change. In fact, fuelled by my weekend endeavours, I felt great on a short, fast 2 miler on Monday.

Tuesday, however, was a different story. While I feel like I’m ‘getting there’ in cardio terms and completed 7 miles quite comfortably, as I ran up and down Sheffield’s peaks and troughs, a faint but familiar pain began to emerge in my knees. It’s strange, because at first the brain begins to deny it, the pain perceivable and then gone in the same few strides. Then, as the miles inch by, the pain becomes more noticeable and distracting, it begins to eat into the reassuring sense of well-being that distance running can sometimes help achieve. I’m probably a little paranoid about this after last year, but it made for some anxious miles.

The fact is, road running is bad for you. Of course, it’s also good for you in a whole host of ways, but – for your legs at the very least – it’s pretty tortuous and, ultimately, damaging. If you’ve ever been to a running shoe shop where they make you run on a treadmill and allow you to view the resulting footage, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I was pretty shocked when I saw my knees and ankles snapping sideways as I ran lightly on a cushioned belt. The thought of what 7 miles on unforgiving concrete looks like doesn’t even bear thinking about.

Of course, this doesn’t mean road running is a bad idea. I’ve just got to maintain an awareness of its dangers and limit my training as a result. It’s very easy, I think, to get close to a state of addiction, hit a point at which you crave the satisfaction of a completed run, lust for the feeling of efficient movements and quick recovery. But sometimes you just have to stay at home. Rest Day.

Window-Gazing

My university department has recently relocated to the newly constructed Jessop building in Sheffield, which can be found just off the university roundabout. If you’re familiar with the city, you might recognise its love-it-or-loath-it multicoloured façade. One of the main effects of this move is that I now have a desk from which I can see out of the window onto the streets below. I can also see what the weather is like. Today it is grey, cold, the roads are visibly smeared with surface water and the window lightly spotted with raindrops. And what do I keep thinking? I’m running 9 miles tonight.

For the last few weeks, my routine has mainly consisted of a short run on Monday, mid-distance run on Tuesday and a longer run on Thursday. The shorter the run is, the more I try to push myself. Recently, I’ve been running with my housemate and another friend (both of whom completed the Sheffield Half last year). This has largely (and thankfully) nullified the inevitable moment of indecisiveness that takes place upon returning home from work, sticking the TV on and drifting into a state of inaction.

I’m a little nervous about tonight's run though, as I haven’t done 9 miles in about a year. Although my general fitness is improving, my higher-mileage endurance is as yet untested. My legs have also started to show signs of mild aches and pains and, although an inevitability of the impact of road-running, I’m a touch paranoid about it since my injury last year.

Other than running (and looking out of the window), I’ve been keeping an eye out for Internet communities related to the Sheffield Half. Although there doesn’t appear to be a messageboard on the marathon’s official site, this Facebook group is a good alternative: (http://tinyurl.com/aagj8p). It’s good for quelling fears, knowing what to expect and all that. www.mapmyrun.com is also a favourite of mine, and great for planning training routes, discussing stuff and even uploading runs via GPS devices and Nike+. I’ll write more on this geeky stuff in later posts (sorry in advance!).

Will report back on how the 9 miles went if i'm still alive.

PS: My Twitter feed for anyone interested: www.twitter.com/philrich

First Post

Hello. I should really start this by introducing myself. My name's Phil, and i'm a 25 year old PhD student from Sheffield. I'm currently training for the SIG Insulations Sheffield Half Marathon (http://www.sheffieldmarathon.com) which takes place at the end of April. At the moment, this largely involves going on a series of sporadic runs throughout the week. I'm hoping to tighten this schedule as the weeks go by so that, come the day itself, i'm some kind of sinew-strewn leg-machine capable of a fairly respectable time.

Me and the Sheffield Half have a brief and cruel history. I trained last year (along with one of my housemates) until I suffered a knee injury a few weeks before. After resting as hard as I could, it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to run. Jealously, I watched a number of my friends bobbing around the course from the sidelines, racing across Sheffield in my car to see them cross the line at the Don Valley Stadium. I was actually surprised by how gutted I felt not to be out there, especially given the cold nights I'd spent pounding the pavement with the very people I was now watching gaze at their medals and commemorative T-shirts.

As my knee cleared up, I headed along to a running shoe shop. They concluded that I suffered from over-pronation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronate) and that my injury had probably been caused by my running shoes. New clog-like footware obtained, I have spent the last 9 months running fairly frequently and my legs have thankfully remained free of problems.

I'd like to use this blog to keep a record of my progress in the weeks before the Big Run itself. I hope to be able to update with reports of improved times, increasing distances and stronger legs. Fingers crossed. However, I also want to use this space to write about running itself. On a cold, blustery, frosty Sheffield night, there's little more loathsome than the prospect of taking to the hilly streets with only an iPod for company. Yet, somewhere a couple of miles down the road, something amazing happens. Warmth floods your limbs, endorphins pile into your brain and the body seems to shift into a blissful autopilot. The legs churn around like they're unaware of any other state, while thoughts idly wander, a side-effect of the body's constant motion. The return home feels like a small victory that lifts the mood. You wonder why you don't do this all the time. Until the next day when you have to do it again.

I've got a few ideas for posts, but I'll try and update at least weekly. Running tonight and it's raining outside...