Stumble's end.

After struggling last week, I began this one hopeful that I'd put my injury troubles behind me and I'd take it gently while my bones healed up. Oh how wrong I was.

Monday was a great feeling 3 miler at a moderate pace, but Monday night, I couldn't sleep properly with the pain in my hip and sitting in the car for long distances has not been helping. I again left it till Thursday before trying again. The same 3 miles and again, everything eases up after the first mile so I'm almost not limping, but then I'm living off Ibuprofen.

On Thursday evening, we went to watch a local amateur production of an amateur production of Macbeth (that was the plot - I forget the real title!) which was essentially a farce and nicely done. At the interval, I was in such discomfort, I knew something had to be done, so I called the doctors magical-automated-appointment-system and got an appointment - the earliest available - for a week Friday! However, it was a start.

Yesterday, I called the doctor's surgery to moan about the wait. It turns out that they have a "bookable appointments" system for extremely un-urgent stuff, and then their normal daily appointments system for everything else. Being more urgent than extremely un-urgent, I got myself a same-day appointment, that very afternoon.

So, I go in and see the doc. He doesn't need to tell me to take a break from running - that's a given before I go in. The hip problem is not straightforward to diagnose, we agree on "dicky hip" (dicky being a very British term for "dodgy" or "not working properly) so I'm referred on to a hip specialist, for which I expect an appointment to materialise within 2 weeks. If not, then I'll be calling on my Medical Insurance once again.

Being on the Internet and thus having all manner of medical resources at my disposal, my own otherwise untrained diagnosis is bursitis. What started out as joint pain is now ligamentish and possibly muscular which might be bad. But hopefully, this will get sorted out with mainly rest and no high-impact activities. At worst, I'll have to get the bursa drained. Yummy.

So that's me done running for some time. I broke myself on the race I named myself after. I'm planning to do some swimming over the coming weeks to try and retain some fitness, but will need to balance this against the need to rest. In the meantime, I'll be reading the posts of all you fine running folk out there and feeling envious. And I plan to join you again in good time.

Mon: 3.16 miles, 30:32 minutes 9:39 pace. 11C HRAve:151 HRMax:162
Thu: 3.1 miles, 30:41 minutes 9:53 pace. 13C HRAve:148 HRMax:158

All the best.

Mr Stumble.

Getting hip.

Apologies to all for my dearth of entries for the past 2 weeks. I changed job on 1st July (in the same company) and promptly found myself travelling up and down this fair isle of ours, getting to know the inside of my car and the view along the West Coast train line more than I cared for. However, the interference with my running has only been minor from the job perspective, other things have happened ...

It was such a surprise how much my legs degenerated over just two weeks off. I knew that I'd need to take things easy, so on Monday (last week!) I set myself an easy 2 miles shakedown to see how things were.

Things seemed not bad' although my left hip still hurts after the 10k 2 weeks previously. So for Wednesday, I planned on a 30 minute easy run. However, on Wednesday morning, I found myself on a 3 hour car trip to Basingstoke with an early start, all day meetings then a dash back to chair the committee for the local scout group.

I finally got time to run just after 9pm and didn't want to loose the opportunity so headed out for my planned 30 minutes. My hip continued to ache for a mile or so and then settled down, but then at just over 2 miles, my right calf started cramping up. It was runnable, so I jogged home, but with little improvement by Friday, I ditched that run and iced and rested up.

I went to see my physio that Friday and she said to me "do you think you're not actually built for running ...?" but I dismissed this on the basis that nearly everyone I know as runners (that's you) run with pain at one time or other, and I've managed pain free before. The rest I took to help my ankle has simply shifted my aches and pains around. Its not going to stop me!

Monday came, so with the calf feeling twitchy but alrightish, I headed out for another easy 2 - a period of acclimatisation seeming necessary. With both hip and calf now giving me some pain, but not as bad as the previous Wednesday, I've started taking glucosamine as a supplement to try and help the hip and been doing more regular stretching to try and ease the calf.

I had planned to meet up with a local club run on Wednesday evening as an intro, but as I had another 6 hours in the car down and up the country, I wasn't back in time. I do think joining a club would be good for me, so it's on my list of things to do. Having left early and arrived home late, my Wednesday run got ditched. Thursday saw me back in London, but I got away at a reasonable time and managed a run after the kids were all in bed. This one was planned as another easy 2 miles to see how my calf was shaping up - hip pain being a given for the moment. With 2 miles under my belt and everything loosening up nicely, I added another easy mile on with no calf pain. I was very pleased with that and I think for the moment, 3 miles may stay my target distance whilst I try to get my hip sorted out.

If it's not one thing, it's another!

My ankle now feels a lot better and so my course of physiotherapy has stopped - I just need to take the time to get regular daily stretching in. Of course, if I end up back at my doctor with my hip and get a referral, it will be months again before I get an appointment.

Training for last 2 weeks.

Mon:2.1 miles, 20:05 minutes 9:35 pace. 13C HRAve:xxx HRMax:xxx
Wed: 3.22 miles, 30:01 minutes 9:19 pace. 13C HRAve:158 HRMax:168
Mon: 2.21 miles, 21 minutes 9:31 pace. 11C HRAve:135 HRMax:156
Thu: 3.03 miles, 29:06 minutes 9:37 pace. 16C HRAve:158 HRMax:177

Hope all is well with you!

Mr Stumble.

Waking from stasis

You couldn't say that its been a particularly dull week in the UK. New man in No.10, biblical floods and bombings at each end of the country. It's all go. I happened to be in London on Friday, and despite all the media's best efforts to tell me what was going on, I didn't know that anything had happened only a mile away from my meetings in the early hours of that morning, until I was reading the front page of the London Evening Standard belonging to the guy sat opposite on the train back home. Where I'd been, off the far West end of the Oxford Road, everything was business as usual.

Back at home, physio seems to be going OK at the moment and my ankle is feeling pretty good. The exercises I have now are a little odd - I have to stand on one foot (the bad one) and then dribble a soccer ball in a circle around that foot. I actually dribble an imaginary soccer ball as I'm so bad a football I'd only end up having to stop and fetch the ball every 10 seconds. Also, the only half-descent ball we have is in a shed defended by our new moat, courtesy of recent heavy rain.

I'm finding that the exercise really demonstrates how much my foot needs to re-learn about balance - it's been protecting the ligaments by shifting some of that work around, but the balancing on one foot exercise needs that ligament to do it's stuff. Hopefully it's starting to build strength again now.

My weight is currently down by 2 or 3 pounds on when I last ran. I guess this is down to to muscle atrophy effect Phil was talking about recently. I know I've lost a lot of what little form I had, and I'm needing more sleep at night now. Hopefully I can keep the weight off and get some fitness back over the next 2 weeks...

... because the good news is that my running starts again tomorrow morning. I plan a nice easy 2 miles shakedown and then probably a couple of 3 milers by the end of the week. However, nothing is set in stone as I don't know how bad things have got.

I shall once again be accompanied by Music as D and I bought each other iPods for our wedding anniversary this week. Tradition would have this as our "ivory" anniversary, but we feel that iPods are a much more environmentally acceptable and useful gift to give these days. Perhaps this will start a trend. "Save an elephant. Buy an iPod." You heard it here first.

The clippy arrangement works really well, so I'm very hopeful it won't fall of my shorts tomorrow.

Hope all is good with you.

Mr Stumble.