The Walker With Heart

So, in the seven weeks since I walked up Skiddaw I've jogged one five KM and walked a bit in the Peak District. My least active day barely crept over 1000 steps.  That was for a loaf of bread and a tin of beans. Before the anti-vaccination people start up, the flu jab is never going to be 100% effective the bastard thing mutates far too quickly for that.   If that was the one time its got through in the decade I've had the jab, then great, I escaped relatively lightly and although I did see the doctor (my fear is a chest infection), I was ill and it's taken a couple of weeks for me to feel like me. Ok that wasn't helped by going back into work after a week and walking into rather a lot of urgent stuff... but hey ho. I've emails to answer, calls to return and worryingly not long until I'd hoped to be in tip top racing condition.  Trust me I'm not. I'm a stone and a bit heavier than I prefer to run at, as noted above I've not run (pretty much...

Christmas is one of those times where I take a breath, look back and reflect... and when reflecting its very easy to concentrate on the bits that are worst, or closest - the lingering cold that won't shift, the months with an injured foot and ankle, the grumbling intermittent attempts to get back into running... Which would be doing myself, and this year, a disservice - the near perfect execution of a training plan, and then a PB marathon and my second fastest marathon and then a two-hour PB on my favourite ultra. It would be forgetting the second fastest half marathon and trekking across Hadrian's Wall in three and a half days. Oh, and the fourth highest mountain England. And most of all it would be forgetting my friends, those who run, those I run with, and those who look on in horror.  Looking back there's only one run that continues to frustrate me, the Fellsman - that dangerous obsession I've acquired for every April.  I've tried training...

A blog inspired by a spat on Facebook, who ever would have thought it... As some of you will know I had a 24 hour ECG tape on during this week and someone suggested that it was unlike me I wasn't planning to "push" it - I reacted with a modicum of sarcasm, mainly because the individual involved should know more than most my approach to exercise. However, as they obviously didn't get it I spent the 5 and a half hours I spent wandering up Skiddaw either itching the re-growing hairs on my chest, looking at the awesome views, panting and working out a new model of fitness. This may not be completely new, so apologies to whichever guru I'm ripping off... I give you the balloon model of fitness. I have one big fitness balloon - that's me in total, all of the walking, running, climbing, gym work etc. Each of those elements is a balloon within the bigger one. My baseline fitness, my usual get up and go stuff is what the Fitbit tends to measure - its the mini...

After the disaster of my anniversary walk (two bikes in 30 min clipping me, more a precautionary stop than critical, but anti-inflammatories were needed) the time has come to knuckle down and do what I do well... Start following the plan Sixteen weeks to Cambridge, a training programme based around three runs a week (with extras for fun, and some long distance walks), the static bike work will continue (apart from anything else the stress relief is great from the combination of shortish intense work & an episode of something daft off amazon prime), the diet will have to improve, as will the hydration... The climbing will help with the core, and I've a sub-plan for what I want to achieve going vertical... Why follow a plan? Partly its reassurance that its something I've done - though normally for marathons. So this is going to be fun, a lighter training load overlaid on the endurance I've retained should be good. I'm also, for exercise, am fairly...

Thirty-Nine years and 51 weeks ago (give or take a few days) my parents handed me over to a team of near strangers.  Those strangers, including an Operation Market Garden veteran, one who would go on to be considered a legend and one who wouldn't... I can't imagine what went through my parents minds as they signed the paperwork, what they felt as I was gassed up and sent down... or the frantic conversation that would've happened when there was a bleed and I had to be rushed back down. There's a couple of trace memories from my time at Great Ormond Street - an odd dislike of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - I think linked to a painting on the corridor down to the operating room.  There's my active dislike of clowns, trust me some clowns in hospitals when the kid is in pain don't make you laugh, or be happy... they scare the living shit out of you! There's a more physical memory, a scar on the top of my left hand's middle finger - during a post-op ...

The bowl of pasta sits steaming... The trainers and socks sit at the end of the bed... The shorts and top gently rotate in the washing machine (modern synthetics, and the amount I sweat are not a good combination)... And I smile... Tomorrow is Beat the Reaper, a 10k around a local park. The reapers wander through the woods, and silently stare at the runners, scythe in hand. It'd be easy to put too much meaning on any run where a GUCH is racing death, so I won't.  I'll go back to smiling and knowing I won't be fast tomorrow, I'll be again heading for a 70min 10k. The last couple of weeks have been about getting back into the groove, feeling good when I run, irrespective of the time it takes.  The night jog last Sunday, the pop out dragging a mate from work out for a slow dash are slowly getting easier mentally.  Not great distances, not great speed, but the point is I'm getting back out there and I'm smiling when I do it. Marathon, and Ultra, runn...

The annual check-up, an event to get even the roughest and toughest GUCH to have a few collywobbles… As I said last week I was 99% sure that everything is ok, hell it’s a year where I’ve run my two fastest marathons, my second fastest half marathon and done other mad stuff as well.   But paranoia is a great friend, and yet again my cardiologists are being sensibly paranoid about my pulmonary valve. It’s a known weakness in those of us with Fallots, and various doctors have been paranoid about mine since I was 16… So whatever the outcome of the next six-months I’ve had a damn good run. So there is some evidence that my pulmonary is weakening, and that my right ventricle is expanding a bit.   Is it a problem – not right now.   The exercise test (boo hiss on a bike), is form rather than function – when the cardiologist sits there and almost goads you with “you’ll probably beat everyone in the hospital, including the staff” you know it’s going to be fun.   I...