The Walker With Heart

This is not a blog which will head of into new age clap trap, nor is it one that will say that all change come from within.  This is one of those blogs inspired by a conversation with a younger person with a dicky ticker, and yes they're happy with me to post it... Its a conversation that we've had over a couple of years. It starts with a simple statement - I am a dinosaur. My surgery was in the first 300 of its type at Great Ormond Street. It was done 41 years ago - the machinery used to keep me alive during that surgery is quite literally in a museum. If you walk into the Science Museum in London, walk into the gallery of scientific progress, (its a right turn after the entrance), you'll get to a big hall and on the right there's a heart bypass machine from the late 60's... It looks like a piece of industrial kitchen equipment.  Nothing is digital, nothing seems to be automated.  In short it looks crude. That's because it was.  That's not a critici...

There's many ways to start a training campaign... There's plenty of advice on how to start... There's the apps that will take you from couch to 5k. Or you can end up not running for the best part of two months, and not running consistently for six and decide to kick things off with a trail half marathon. THIS IS NOT A RECOMMENDED COURSE OF ACTION!!!! There are is a mild arrogance amongst a few of my friends, and indeed myself, who know deep down that on the day, with a medal at end, that we can strap on the shoes and churn it out.  We've lost count of the runs we've done of the years.  Our medal collection has reached the point where we only keep the ones that mean something; the ultras, the marathons, the firsts and ones that just caught on our souls. These runs with nothing behind them aren't, normally, the miracle runs you read about in the magazines - the ones where someone whose never run before runs an 80 minute half marathon.  These are long, slow...

I've said before that I'm a medal whore... show me something shiny and I'm there... Not for me the Gold, Silver or Bronze of the Paralympics, or Olympics, but something more tangible. Headstones (from beating the reaper), Rudolph's from Santa Dashes, representations of Mad Dogs, Countries, Romulan WarBirds, drum kits, the Liver Buildings and not forgetting Sefton Park and Scousers! In piles, its shows five x 5ks, one 8kish, six x 10k, two x Half Marathons and one Marathon... And then the bonus medals - two guitars with spinning plectrums, a juke box, a pair of headphones and a giant globe (if you too like medals check out Rock and Roll runs - always well organised and bonus medals galore for the dedicated whore). The medals are tangible, solid memories of the firsts - first fancy dress race, first overseas race, first virtual run, and my first 10k under an hour.  They clank as a reminder of what I have done and hint at what I will do in 2017. Something's are...

I’m not a runner who runs everyday or every week, I move in and out of desiring the feeling that running gives me… That desire can be generated, when I am facing a run or a distance that genuinely scares me – a marathon will do that. Or it comes back naturally, softly insinuating itself in the back of my head.  I catch myself wondering how to take my kit on a work trip, wondering where my Garmin is and whether its charged.  I start thinking about what I’m eating, not changing much, but just thinking… It must be infuriating to watch, as I seemingly go into running hibernation, still turning out for runs and not doing horrendously – nowhere as good as I should be, nowhere as good as I had been six months earlier. Which brings me to my first race of 2017 – an mixed terrain half marathon along the Wirral Way – I printed the plan, and I followed it for a week and then I didn’t.  The desire wasn’t there… So plan B is going to kick in, I know I can run halfs with little o...

Elite athletes have a concept known as periodisation - they organise their training around key events; there's the four year cycle of the Olympics, the Worlds, the Diamond League and so and so forth... They will plan their lives, marriages, children around these cycles. I'm not an elite athlete, I'm not genetically predisposed to that, nor do I have the single minded determination to make that. What I am is someone who can train hard for a focused period of time, push myself in that time slot and then get distracted afterwards and do other stuff... So, after the Dublin Rock and Roll Half, and if I'm honest with myself since the Liverpool Rock and Roll Marathon I've been closer to competing in an eating competition than bothering any of my PBs, the desire to get out there and run has been minimal and the weight has come back - I'm back to my pre-marathon training weight and feel it (uncomfortably in some trousers). But I've not been inactive -  I cycl...

Running in foreign lands holds a mystique, and for this dicky ticker runner a few problems – across continental Europe some race organisers ask for ECGs, others for positive approval from medics for undertaking an event. Whilst I’m sure I could get a copy of my ECG, I’m not sure it would help much – let's face it there’s plenty of general cardiologists who wouldn’t get my ECG and what it meant, let along alone if it's was flaky.  The positive approval thing is an interesting one, I’m encouraged to exercise – indeed welcomed as a shining light (on the exercise if not the volumes of food I consume, but as I’ve often said I’m no saint and definitely no angel).  However, in an increasingly litigatoius age would any cardiologist risk saying I’m positively fine to pound the streets for a number of hours??? Which made the choice of international run easy – I needed somewhere that didn’t ask for ECGs, and a run organiser I trusted to have the right support in place.  Roll u...

I suppose it had to happen... A near perfect marathon training period, only marred by the heat of the run itself.  A cracking month of learning to ride a bike again and then doing my first big bike ride... And then I should have switched back to running... and I did for a whole week... The plan was to start building the hills in for the Ultra in mid-Aug.. So off to the Peak District I went, a merry walk to the youth hostel from Edale station - some of my favourite miles in the world... However. somewhere along the way I jarred or twisted my knee... and spent a painful 2km walking down the backside of Losehill... Now an injury should be a massive bruise, a whole body scrape or something which is spurting blood... Mine is a dull ache, an awareness of something not quite right, a pressure that nags at me when I'm walking. RICE has been engaged, as has ibuprofen internally and externally and a week and a bit later its still there, a pressure on the inside of my right knee th...