The Walker With Heart

I have a niggle, shouldn't be a surprise, and its a return of an old friend - the puffy foot.  In the words of my GP, "you've got chronic soft tissue damage - what do you expect, how many times have you twisted it?" So when I've hammered it, it puffs up... Not a lot I can do about it, if it gets too bad then I'll pop to the doctors and get tablets that are banned in horse racing and normally induce a whole cascade of rumours - water tablets are well known to my dicky ticker community, and normally for heart failure.  So the rumours do circulate.  Trust me, everything is working as it should... So, a week of recovery (that was in the plan from the start), just walking and pottering about to keep things active.  I don't often blog about work, because quite frankly one bloke sitting at a desk drafting stuff isn't that exciting.  However, this week Civil Service Live came to town and I ended speaking at it twice.  It is very easy to be very cynical...

I tried a new memory technique for recalling my runs for this my one and only Ultra I've gone back and done more than once... The list in my head trots out as: Friendliest Runner Kestrel Frilly Knickers They're Lost - I'm not last Mitch Benn Wrong way up Win Hill Jane's Mate Magnum Cement Cup of Tea Success I - not lost Wedding - man in chef's hat Stepping Stones party Success II - not jumping a wall Friendly faces Success III - The right path Success IV - The right bridge Frilly Knickers Cows - potentially viscous Success V - not lost II Victory - 2h faster than last year... Well, that's exhausted me and I've not added the detail... I was determined to go out slow and stay steady, the weather was a lot gentler than last year (16C instead of nudging 30) and I've done a hell of a lot of running between then and now (by the Garmin 1400km / 870 miles) so all was looking good.  Mentally I was in the right place for a PB, and physi...

The marathon part of my year is almost up, my two fastest marathons in the bag, a second fastest half marathon, some sexy running bling and the usual collections of aches and pains. I know myself moderately well, which means I know my tolerance of "doing the same thing threshold" is beginning to reach its limits with running.  I know, shocking, I can get bored of running. It's also been a long slog, from the 31st December I've pushed myself fairly hard - my Garmin (which only gets worn when I'm doing something "proper") reports over 700 km since then - not bad for someone whose first "challenge year" was to do 1000km... My Fitbit, picking up the days I go off stomping along the canal to get to town as well as the running is floating at over 2500km. This time last year I was facing an Ultra marathon injured and with a lousy training record, this year I'm facing the same Ultra with a shedload more training, and a specific recce day and ...

It was a bad start... My Garmin was still in walk mode, rather than run mode... It was a bad (for me) weather day... The scheduled rain didn't turn up until after I'd finished, and it was warm and sunny... Though unlike London there was a breeze, a nice gentle one blowing us along the promenade... I had no expectations of a time, I had no desire to break myself and in many ways had put this is in the "long training run" box for the Ultra next month.  I'd said to a mate that given the hills I'd treat it like a fell run on tarmac and that approach worked.  If it was hill and I was going slowly I walked up it.  Around that I tried to keep my 900m run / 100m walk approach going. The course... ahh the course... Through a World Heritage site, around the Cavern Quarter, past the cultural quarter as we worked our way up towards the Football Stadiums, around Goodison through the park and then up to Anfield - the locals were out in force, I was offe...

I've said before that I'm crap at being ill... But I'm recovering... And that solid core of who and what I am is still there.  Reinforced by what I helped happen at the weekend.  The CHF  team worked hard over the last 8 months to get the programme set up and ready to roll, sweet talking & strong arming companies to get the maximum bang for every penny that is raised for us.  The volunteers, that small army of people who cheerfully and freely give their time, are heroes one and all - the nurses who were there all weekend, both in case of problems (they've never been needed for anything cardiac) and also just to chat to parents & kids, the people who manned the stands, the bouncy castle and face painted for hours on the Quayside.  The parents and kids were there to enjoy themselves, and from what I saw and heard they did - these weekends are about creating a bit of space so families can be families, and chat to families who get the is...

I'm not good when I'm ill... I hate having a cold, I detest taking more lotions and potions than I have to do to keep the systems working. However, the cold I predicted before the run in to London has finally landed with avengeance, at the same time as I've been dealing with hayfever.  One masked the other and the 10k on Thursday was probably more of a warning sign than I picked up on. So, sudefed & lemsip capsules and more calories than you can imagine have been thrown down my neck - yesterday was awful, today just bad.  Tomorrow is back to work, so of course I'll be better by 10am... It was meant to be a 13 miler this weekend, so I'm switching to positive mental imaging... and hoping that'll get me around Liverpool. I did a 26.2 mile training run with a few (36,000) of my friends and took a stunning 12 min off my PB in London.  Since then I've run well within myself, walked a few miles with a few thousand feet of ascent, been injured, recovered...

I'm a lucky sod... In the space of four days I've been with some of the most inspirational people I know from the two parts of my life that people have the most problem reconciling... Starting up the BT Tower, I was part of a stunningly brilliant group of people.  A select group of disabled network leaders and organisations that get disability in the work place were at the launch of a very important book - for the first time someone has done some research into why people do, or more likely don't, tell their employer they have a long-term health condition or disability. That someone is Kate Nash, one of the few delightfully mad people I would cheerfully walk on fire for, she has a quiet determination born of fighting the good fight and knowing that sometimes that annoying as it is the quiet, long game wins... Leadership comes in many forms, hers is one I wish I could emulate more as I charge at the next windmill... So, if you have a minute have a look - this i...