Swim Club

The end of August is almost upon us and I still can't run. However...

• I can give blood and just about not faint
• I can swim loads and become the fastest in the medium speed lane
• I can unleash a proper smile with 50% less metal involved

I've said for years that giving blood is something I'd like to do, so with some gentle coercion I booked an appointment and spent the day eating chocolate to 'up my blood sugar'. I've got no problem with needles and actually found it interesting to watch the process. It didn't take too long and I felt fine. Then the nurse brought my chair back upright and things started to get a bit ropey! 

 

The nurse gave me that knowing look and asked me two or three times if I felt ok. I feel fineeeee I said. Each time I answered I felt less sure of my answer. By the fourth I'm fineeeee I was not fine ha, and my eyes started doing that mad thing when your vision starts to close in, combined with my body melting down and feeling like I'd had five too many beers the night before and finished it with a spin on the dodgems. 

The nurses flapped around, icing my neck and fanning me until I didn't 'look grey'. Fortunately within ten minutes or so I was a-ok and well on to my third pack of Biscoff biscuits. All a big ado about nothing really. Since then the blood guys have sent me more texts than anyone else, said my blood is good and ready to go and sent me a lovely keyring. All worthy of my ten minutes of feeling a wee bit tricky, and an amazing thing to do. Go do it!

I've been swimming at least twice a week which, now that I've found a pool that isn't full of ignorant knobheads doing backstroke in a packed pool and a half decent changing room, I don't mind as much. 

I think it also helps that I'm getting better at it. No longer am I the floundering seal in the middle lane, now I'm the undisputed champion of the middle lane. I wasn't even overtaken for 162 lengths until some dolphin went passed me yesterday. But don't you worry sports fans, I got him back later on. 

It's still staggeringly dull, but it's keeping some sort of fitness together for me.

BIG things are happening with my teeth though (which reminds me, watch STRANGER THINGS, it's mega). On Thursday just gone, I had my top braces removed. 

YES.

This is a huge thing for me. The photo below shows what they were like before and the comprehensive whacking the teeth took from the cricket ball. To go from that to the current reality in six months is bloody amazing.

The bottom teeth still need some work, but no one can see them bad boys so it's fine. My dentist is my hero.

In other news, I had a scan on my knee and saw the specialist a few times. Thankfully the scan showed no stress fracture or damage to the bone (hallelujah) but I do have a sprain to the medial ligament. So it most certainly could have been worse but it reaffirms the decision to pull out of Berlin. That was dead in the water as soon as I felt it.  I'm targeting a return to the roads at the end of September and already eyeing up what runs to do next year. I will do a marathon. So fix up knee.

In the mean time, if anyone has any recommendations for Berlin let me know. There is now considerably more emphasis on eating and drinking, so it's not all bad.

So remember; go give blood, go swimming and always, always brush your teeth.

Knee KO

Earlier this week I made the difficult decision to pull out of the Berlin Marathon due to an ongoing problem with my knee. 

The eight-week-countdown-klaxon sounded on Sunday and as much as I wanted to grit my teeth and continue trying, I faced little choice but to be realistic. After a two week break from all high impact exercise I hoped there would be a more tangible improvement but I barely lasted two miles before the pain returned, eventually pulling up after limping to four miles. In the final mile of my five mile route I walked home knowing the decision had been made for me. I've been unable to run properly for five weeks and I don't want to even think about how many miles have gone from my legs in that time. If my knee was 100% I'd back myself to get back up to the distance in eight weeks, but it's a long way from 100% and it's reached the time where I need to get it seen to. 

I saw the GP on Monday and have been referred to the knee specialist who I will see next week. The British Heart Foundation have been really supportive and helped me pull out of the marathon without any problems, essentially saying I will get a place in a marathon next year running for them which is good as it's a nightmare of a process.

I will continue the mind numbing exercise bike and swimming routine to hopefully keep some sort of a solid base of fitness to get going again. Whenever I can. 

I know that in the grand scheme of things me being unable to run matters very little, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't pretty fucking gutted. 

I will fix the knee and go again.

At least my teeth are looking good. 

(oh OOOH) Trouble x3

Ten weeks to go and there is a very real chance I won't be able to run the marathon.

Man, it sucks to acknowledge that.

Two weeks after pulling up after three miles I'm still struggling with my knee. The dull ache and stiffness on the inside of my left knee is showing no real signs of abating.

I've seen the physio who felt the knee itself was structurally sound but may have been suffering from some referred pain from the quadricep which might be the source of the problem. I had acupuncture on the knee (I was dead brave/it doesn't hurt) and a deep massage on the quad but nearly a week later and the problems are still very much here.

I've been so worried about losing the fitness I had built up over the last few years - I've ran a minimum of twice a week for nearly two years - that I've been on the exercise bike almost daily, whilst dragging myself to the local swimming pool three times in the last week as well. 

That comes with its own challenges. Not only are swimming pool changing rooms minging, I spend 45 minutes weaving in and out of slow, angsty people who are quite frankly fuming to be sharing the pool with someone who is actually looking to swim, rather than drift their way down the pool, waffling on to Margaret about Theresa May's shoes. 

I've been doing all sorts of stretches and manipulation of the knee exercises that Dr Mark and friends on YouTube recommend whilst I've been doing enough squats to put Nicki Minaj to shame.

But still, problems.

I ran yesterday morning and for a mile and a half to two miles, it felt ok but the third mile was uncomfortable at best. It's then been very sore for the best part of 24 hours following.  

I feel like the next two weeks are pivotal. If I can't get out and running without discomfort by the eight-week-countdown-klaxon sounding on the 31st July, then it's looking particularly bleak. I plan to see the physio again and I will continue my array of stretches and non-impact exercise, and hope upon hope it begins to improve.

It is beyond frustrating and disappointing.

And I'm getting my arse handed to me on the Fitbit workweek hustle as well. 

Sakes.

In the mean time, if anyone has a spare knee, knows a magical healer or has a truckload of horse placenta lying around, give me a shout. 

Call Home

This time last week I had just got home after running 17 miles in 2 hours and 25 minutes. This was a big moment for me - the longest distance I'd ran, the longest block of time I'd ran and the first time I genuinely thought I could run the 26 miles that lie in wait in Berlin come September 25th. 

Today, I had to call home after three miles to get someone to come and pick me up. My knee, sending out alarm bells on every impact, wasn't having it. Or at least, it was certainly on the way to not having it. All I could think about for a good mile before I eventually did throw in the towel was - do not run through pain.

Not pain from running for over an hour or two, the pain of something not being quite right. It is a very different pain. You know that you've ran 17 miles, you feel it in your muscles and your bones, your feet and your legs - but that is more of a 'bloody hell, you ran how far?!' kind of satisfying pain. 

Today was very different and I think it is my own naivety that caused it.

After Saturday last week I felt good, pretty sore on Sunday and then less so on Monday. A normal sort of recovery time for 12+ mile runs for me. I decided to go for a steady 'recovery' run on Monday night and didn't think anything of it. Then Tuesday comes along and the pain on the inside of my left knee arrives. It's a strange one to describe - the knee itself feels strong, but there is a distinct discomfort that flares up when I walk. 

I decided to rest and did not do my usual second run of the week on Thursday and was confident that the discomfort was decreasing. I went out this morning planning to do five miles but after three I knew the only sensible option was to stop. 

With Berlin in 12 weeks, it isn't a time to grit my teeth and drag out a few more miles home for the sake of it. There is literally nothing to gain doing that. 

So here I sit, after a twenty minute soak in the bath, with voltarol on my knee and a few painkillers currently doing their thing too. 

It is so bloody frustrating. 

I don't think it's serious and I've loosely linked it to inflammation of the tendons/bursa on the inside of the knee which a quick google firmly points the finger at upping the milage too soon as the cause. I probably shouldn't have done 17 (a bit of a jump, admittedly), and I probably should have given it another day or two of recovery.

(P.S. I know it is ridiculous to google symptoms, and I normally never would, but I'm pretty sure there are no instances of anyone dying from a sore knee...)

But heyho, you live and learn.

I plan to take it relatively easily for the next few days/week and see whether there is a improvement. I'm hopeful I will be able to look back at this and see it as a useful milestone in the Berlin build up, sort of bringing me back down to earth after being relatively comfortable last week. I've never really had any real pain before that has hindered my ability to run, and maybe this just highlights how different the game is when it comes to marathon training. There was a danger of becoming overconfident in what I can do, when really I need to plan the next 12 weeks much more stringently and not break my body before we even get in to August. 

That's how I'm going to choose to spin it in my mind anyway, otherwise it's all a bit disheartening.

So I'm going to lie in bed, play Football Manager and eat ice cream.

Berlin: T-Minus 99

It's 99 days until the Berlin Marathon.

That means there is A LOT of running to do over the next 14 weeks. Now that I am back from a week in Tenerife (making full use of all inclusive food and drink, rest assured), it's now time to move preparation up a notch or two. With that in mind, I plan to write more in the build up for a couple of reasons:

1. It's a good motivator
2. I can bang the 'please sponsor me!' drum loud and proud
3. I can justify the amount of food (chocolate, I mean chocolate) that I will inevitably pile through 

In other news, my teeth are looking pretty good at the moment. Dentist Donna reckons the braces will be off at the end of July or in early August so I better start getting those applications ready to be a teeth model (*ping*).

I ran the Ramathon a few weeks back in 1hr 37 which was about 12 seconds faster than my previous best (on a not-downhill-all-the-way route which doesn't really count), so that was good. Was nice to run it with a few mates who also set quickest times for themselves which I applaud. The day itself was clouded by the death of a runner no more than 300 yards from the end which is always massively upsetting. It does pose questions about better health screening being made mandatory before running such distances I think - and I'm not talking about a tick box on website to say you're all fine and dandy, but something more professional and conclusive. It is probably something I should look at doing before Berlin. My thoughts are with the poor family and friends of the runner who died, it's such a terrible shame.

I went to see Springsteen the other week where an acoustic 'Thunder Road' stole the show - knocking 'Never Forget' by a full compliment of Take That in to #2 of the best songs I've witnessed in person.

I joke, of course. 'Patience' was waaaaaay better.

A week in Tenerife was a good way to recharge and freshen up the legs, and there are few better ways to spend time than on a golf course in the sunshine with your mates - even when you're hacking it around like a 52 handicapper by the end. The food was good, the gin was... strong and I flew through a couple of books #takemeback

Berlin, Sunday 25th September

So, getting to it then... 99 days, sleeps and wake ups until running around Berlin for hours and hours becomes very real. Despite now being a relatively experienced half marathon runner, the prospect of doubling the distance is daunting. I never thought I would run a marathon, but then I never thought I would run a half. To complete a race of that distance is still an achievement for me, of course it is, but the initial glow of completing what felt impossible has naturally subsided a little bit. I could have just kept chucking out halfs and improving 30 seconds here and there, but one of the biggest things about being able to do it at all is the motivation. 

The motivation to do something as bat shit mental as run 26.2 miles is something else entirely. Not only for the personal achievement and a bloody massive medal, but to do something in aid of the British Heart Foundation means a lot to me and some special people in my life. I've ran for the BHF in the past and raised £850 back in 2014 for my first half marathon which was a r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s amount of money. This time I have actually got a place in the official BHF 'Heart Runners' team which is pretty cool.

I'm aiming to raise £1,000 which is a lot, but so is 26.2 miles! No rush on this at all but the page is here for those who are interested. Once we get in to September, I'll start knocking on your doors and turning up at your desks with a bucket and my vuvuzela to encourage you to get on board the BQ bandwagon!

Just looking at the route makes me feel sick, but here it is for those who enjoy looking at maps.

Out of all the city's in the world, there are arguably few better to run around. I found German history and the World War's endlessly interesting so I am excited to see some of the most famous sights in modern European history. I'm more excited to finish obviously, but the Brandenburg Gate will be pretty cool.

I'm going to spend some time this week working out a training plan - I'm not having these mad run six times a week online plans. My legs will fall off and I will lose my mind. 

More likely it will be three runs a week, a steady 5/6 miler on Monday, with perhaps 10+ on Wednesday and then gradually cranking up the distance on Saturday. I feel like swimming is a good idea too to help with recovery.

The big game changer is the change in pace I'm going to have to adopt. I ran the Ramathon at 7.21 mins/mile. Keeping up that pace is impossible and stupid. I want to run a sub-four hour marathon. If I ran 9 mins/mile, I would come in at 3hrs 56. That shows how massive a drop in speed I'm looking at. I tried to run deliberately slowly the other day, and found that even 8.30 min/miles was incredibly hard. Imagine someone telling you to write really slowly. You're doing it for about two lines before you get bored, frustrated and just go back to normal. That's how running a minute slower per mile felt. 

With that said, deliberately running at 9 min pace is not the plan. 8.30's will be the plan (3hrs 43) and we'll see where we are when the distance gets above and beyond the half distance. 

   

Fast Forward Button

I remember being told when I was younger that time moves faster the older you get. I ridiculed this in a typically naive and childlike manner. How could time move any quicker or slower? Time was time. It was the same at all times. Except at school, of course. At school it could d-r-a-g. But looking back, it didn't really, did it?

It's been nearly 80 days since I last wrote on here. I thought it had been no more than half that. That's how fast time is moving. It feels like someone has accidentally pressed the fast forward button on the remote and everyone is speaking and moving 2x the normal speed. Somehow, it's nearly May already, the football stickers for the summer tournament are out and I even saw the muppets who will be 'singing' for the UK at bloody Eurovision on TV the other day. 

The beauty of Project 9626 was that the targets I set out for the year were very easy to break down and gradually tick off individual milestones. I wouldn't say I've struggled for motivation this year, but the things I am looking to do are far more open ended which can make progress feel much slower. 

But perhaps it isn't.

On Tuesday this week I will have had my braces on for TWO MONTHS. 

This is big news in the world of BQ. Due to the mashed up nature of my teeth, I had to have one removed to allow space for the others to move in to. This was not pleasant and meant I had a gap about 5mm which is obviously nothing, but when it is in your mouth it is EVERYTHING. The gap is getting smaller and my teeth are definitely moving, so that's good news. On Friday I am having the wire changed which my dentist has booked an hour appointment in for. Yay.

It's not the greatest image at all (and I'm pretty sure the image has been flipped...) but things are moving. Four months more worth of movement until I have a Hollywood smile.

As an aside, turns out the tooth fairy doesn't come to 26 year olds. 

Fuming.

Something that wasn't planned for this year was to get another new job. But sometimes opportunities come up that are impossible to turn down. So in the words of John Lennon in one of the more tolerable songs of the season... 'So this is Christmas... (but-on-a-permanent-contract-not-just-for-six-months)'.

My new job is sort of my old job but I'm really looking forward to starting again. In an ideal world I wouldn't have left the Christmas team back in January but I've had a good four months in the Opticians team where I've been lucky enough to work on a few really big, exciting campaigns (Zookeeper Zoe is amazing by the way) and it was great to get an opportunity to work in a different part of the business.

And who wouldn't want to be planning Christmas in the summer?

(Honestly, it's exciting really).

The merry road to Berlin is going pretty well, a solid run at the Reading half a few weeks ago and a quick 10k in Derby over the weekend. I've got one more half in June and then it is all eyes towards the 26.2 miles that I've somehow got to drag myself through in September. In March I ran a 15 miler in two hours which lessened the panic somewhat, and watching Eddie Izzard's utterly ridiculous Sport Relief challenge on TV the other day has helped to put it all in to perspective.

Also, I'm eating a shit load of jaffa cakes and chocolate at the moment to balance off the amount I'm running so that is a-ok with me.

I have admittedly sucked at the whole moving out research thing so far. I am saving money but working out what I want to do has fallen to the side a wee bit. Before the next entry I will find out what all this help to buy spiel actually means, as well as how much an iron, ironing board and other super cool stuff is going to set me back. Yes sir.

One thing I have surprised myself with is churning out 3577 words of the pipe dream that is #BookBQ! I'll give it to Paula Hawkins, writing is a little harder than I thought. But I'm pretty certain the first 3577 words of my story are better than the first 3577 words of The Girl on the Train.

I've got until the end of May to get up to 10,000 words and then I will enter this competition if it is good enough.

So that's that, a bit of an update. 

Oh, and if anyone stumbles upon a Thomas Müller football sticker I'll give you a quid. 

Cheers!

Volume Two

Not quite sure how it's happened, but it's February.

Since the should-have-been-award-winning Project 9626 drew to a close on 27th December, lots has happened. I spent five days watching the cricket in the shadow of Table Mountain in 35'c sunshine (essentially paradise), I witnessed the greatest, most spellbinding individual innings from an Englishman in decades (if not ever), I met a seven foot lion and I bagged an empty seat next to me on the flight home.

It's been good.

January has flown by since I landed back at Heathrow on Friday the 8th... the new job started which is full of new-job-challenges but going ok, I've eaten a ton of Top Deck Cadburys chocolate (for the life of me, why don't they sell this in the UK?), read a few books and made a huge decision that effects how 2016 is going to shape up.

The original plan for the year was to move out and get a place of my own in Nottingham. I looked on the usual Rightmove, Zoopla worlds and didn't get very far. I think I suffered from having too set expectations with what I wanted. Annnnnyway, after a check up visit to the dentist last week, I decided to put on hold the whole moving out thing and instead fix my teeth. Long time fans of Project 9626 will remember the disagreement my teeth had with a cricket ball 18 months ago.

Whilst I was essentially the luckiest guy in the world not to not lose all my teeth/an eye, my teeth took a hell of a whack, knocking one out and several out of place. On the face of things, you probably wouldn't notice. But I'm very aware. So I've decided to get them sorted out! Thankfully this can be done in six months without making me look like I've got mouth full of metal. Which is nice.

The flip side of staying at home and getting nice teeth before moving out is that I have a bit more time on my hands to do it right. At this point, I know nothing about moving. I had assumed renting a flat was the best plan, but perhaps I should look at buying somewhere relatively cheap and go about improving it with a view to getting on to the ladder? Who knows! I'm going to do some readin' and some learnin' and find out what is possible. Despite knowing absolutely nothing about it, I *think* I will find it interesting.

I'm definitely going to start watching Location, Location, Location, Location at the very least.

This will be one of the things I plan to write about on Working Title 14... the fear inducing, yet quite exciting prospect of moving out.

(FYI - Working Title 14 might be a holding title, it might turn in to something else. It's all in the early stages again. I didn't want to just rinse and repeat Project 9626 with four more targets for 2016, I wanted to do something a bit more long term. I was always quite very surprised by how well Project 9626 went down, and it's a medium by which I can actually get shit done - which in the procrastination central that is my life generally, that is good.)

So things will come and go.

One thing that I wish would come and go very quickly is the terrifying prospect of 26.2 miles in Berlin.

This is going to be a massive challenge. I ran 7 miles on Saturday and it was t-o-u-g-h. Only a further 19 miles on top of that. At this point, I don't know how I'm going to be able to do it, other than wearing rollerblades and strapping myself to the back of the pace car. 

I must remember though, that I am lucky enough to be part of the British Heart Foundation's 'Heart Runners' team. A healthy dose of perspective is always welcome, and that is exactly how I am positioning this. Hopefully it'll motivate me to somehow run for 4 hours on the day, and countless more in the build up to it. I plan to raise £1,000 for the charity which will make it all very worth while indeed. 

I'm also going to eat and drink like a KING in the weeks following it, so roll bloody on September the 26th!

Another thing I'd really like to do (and writing it down means I pretty much have to do it) is the super clichéd dream of writing a book! I've been thinking about it for a while now, I've even written down some actual thoughts... and when you read books like 'The Girl on the Train' and see it hailed as the best-psychological-thriller-story-book-best-ever-ever*... well, it's difficult to think I could produce something worse.

(*the biggest crock of shit I've ever read)

So we'll see how that goes. 

And we'll see how the whole Working Title 14 shebang goes on the whole. Read it, don't read it, I don't mind. Although if you've got this far, thank you. Hopefully it'll flow in a similar vein to Project 9626 and prove to be a half decent read and I'll get some stuff done.

Adios.