More snakes than ladders...

In the last week, I've been chomping at the bit. Those words, "Don't run before our next appointment" haunted me. Within a few days my knee felt good, I was tentatively trying it out up stairs and in short sprints across the road. I knew it was better, but I was good, and I waited for my appointment.

Some more massage, and a chat about running plans led to further horror: "I think you should leave it another few days, and perhaps go for a short run at the start of next week." Really? Did he not realise that I was all fixed and ready to run miles and miles and miles and miles? Did he not know that I had a two half marathons in the next seven weeks?

100% accurate representation of how I felt.

What he perhaps did know, or have an inkling of, was that I wasn't fixed.

He gave me a plan: two short, gentle runs this week. I figured if I did the first on Monday, and the second on Wednesday, then I might be able to sneak another one in on Saturday if everything went well. So it was that, full of excitement, and slightly scared, I was dressed in that sexy fluorescent yellow once again. I decided upon a nice little three mile loop that I knew well.

It was great! Well - the first mile was. No pain at all, just a nice mile completed in nine minutes. I was chuffed, and started to work out how I would add the mileage back in to get me up to a decent distance for the Bath Half. Then my knee started to ache. Then my knee started to ache more. Then my knee started to ache really quite badly. Then I stopped. I'd completed two miles, and I practically hobbled the third mile home.

Stairs are once again my nemesis, merely standing causes unreasonable discomfort. I still have a vague hope that I might be able to get out for a short run later this week, but if I do, it might be on a one mile loop! More likely, I'm going to give my leg a decent rest, and reassess things in a week or so. If I can persuade myself to be that patient. In the mean time, I'm going to have to live vicariously through my wife's running: wonder if she fancies a ten miler at the weekend, I know a really good route...

Back in the Physio's Room

Ah. My running of the past few years has come full circle. A persistent knee injury in late 2012 brought a spell of regular running to a halt, and resulted in a lengthy spell of physiotherapy and rehabilitation. I've seen my physioregularly since for sports massage, but last week was the first time I'd been back to see him for an injury. And really, it was probably all my own stupid fault...

As I mentioned in my last post, I didn't get much running done over Christmas: a bug struck me down for a couple of weeks. Prior to that, I'd been running pretty well: three Sunday long runs in excess of 10 miles, and plenty of variety in there too. Over the Christmas/New Year fortnight, I ran a parkrun on Christmas Day, another ten days later, and then a 10 mile run the day after that. And that, as they say, was that.

The 10 miler was actually alright: I felt pretty good on it, took it at a pretty gentle pace, and actually enjoyed the run. For the rest of the day though, my knees made it well known that they hadn't enjoyed the run. Stairs were not fun, carrying my daughter around was not fun, and carrying my daughter up the stairs: ha! In the evening, I had a short session with the foam roller to try and sort things out:

Right. I give in. My knees (and legs in general) have been complaining all day. Foam roller of death it is. I blame you @SomersetPhysio.
— Ben Timmo (@bentimmo) January 4, 2015

In retrospect, I clearly should have eased back into things a little more: if I'd had time off because of a niggle, I would have done. But with it being a spot of illness, I didn't really think about it. And... if this was my only sin, I'd probably be back running again already. What followed... was sheer idiocy.

Time and time again, both within my club, and generally through Twitter and running magazines, I've been told that you should steer clear of speed-work if you have even the inkling of an injury.

Time and time again, both within my club, and generally though Twitter, I advise people with an injury or discomfort to either rest completely, or to do a gentle recovery-style run.

Medicinal peas!

So, on Monday, with sore knees that still strongly disliked stairs, I must surely have rested, or gone for a nice plod along the canal, right? No, of course not. Like a complete lunatic I went to a club track session. I completed, I think, 8 laps of the track. Although that somewhat overstates how much I ran: two warm-up laps, five laps of the session, and then one "is this as bad as.... ARGHHHHH, yes it is" lap. That last lap was taken at a very slow jog, for about 150 metres, before even that was too painful, and I made do with an awkward hobble.

On Tuesday, I went to work, pumped full of a combination of painkillers that I found in our medicine drawer: things were not looking good for getting back out again that week.

On Wednesday, I felt sorry for myself.

On Thursday, I felt sorry for myself.

On Friday, I continued to feel sorry for myself, but also decided to do something about it. I managed to secure an appointment later that same day to see my physio. Part of me had been quite scared about taking this step. My rehab from my previous knee problem had taken months, and I couldn't really bear to consider that this could take a similar length of time. Of course, looking back, I have to admit that I wasn't very... assiduous at completing my daily exercises.

And so, on Friday afternoon, I found myself back in the physio's room. After ascertaining exactly where the pain was, and which movements triggered it, and which did not, I received an ITB massage. Generally, I get on fine with sports massage: while plenty of people complain about them, I don't find them too painful. An ITB massage though, that hurts. Still, I left with instructions to massage the ITB with my foam roller, a set of exercises to complete each day. Oh, and those horrible words "Don't run before our next appointment."

I made our next appointment for as soon as I could.

Christmas lurgy and getting going again

So, like many, I had an unintended lull in my training over Christmas due to a horrible cough/cold combo. I'd always planned to drop the mileage a little, but in the last two weeks, I've done 17 miles. That doesn't sound too bad, you might think, but 13.1 of those miles were done this weekend! I missed two races that I'd been looking forward to over the Christmas period: I hadn't signed up for the Stoke Stampede, but probably would have done on the day, while the Chard Flyer on New Year's Day I had paid for. Still, I really didn't have any choice in the matter, so there is no use getting too annoyed about it. Though it does mean that I probably won't run a 10k road race for over 6 months: my last was at the end of September, and my next scheduled is the start of April.

Yes Strava... a "rest".

My focus now switches to my spring half marathons. In the three weeks before Christmas, my long runs were all just over 10 miles, and I was averaging well over 20 miles a week. I set a parkrun PB at the start of November, and a road 5k PB in early December, so I know that despite this little setback, I'm running pretty well. My focus in the next few weeks is making my long runs long, maintaining a good variety of runs, and strengthening work. I don't know when I'll fit the last in, because it's something I've never scheduled in, and always the first thing to get dropped if I have other things to do. (And with a 15-month-old daughter, there are always other things to do!)

I've avoided the temptation of the "review" blog for the most part: suffice to say that I easily hit all of my targets for last year, and my targets for the year going forward aren't really set. I have a few things in mind, but to be honest, I don't know how quickly I can improve. My focus is going to be on running well, and racing fun. Yes, I want that 10k PB, I want that half-marathon PB. I definitely want to go sub-20 for 5k. But I want to try more trail races, some odd distances, some hilly races. I'm hoping to get out and do a fair number of races in the Somerset Series: they're local, and generally pretty reasonably priced. There are generally a few people I know at each, and they offer the variety that I'm after.

parkrun tourism: Pomphrey Hill

At the weekend, my wife and I headed off again to try out another parkrun. This time, a Christmas party in Bristol with my wife's family was the excuse. There are four parkruns in and around Bristol: Ashton Court, Little Stoke, Pomphrey Hill and Chipping Sodbury. There is also one in Bath. As we were staying in Keynsham the two most logical options were Pomphrey Hill and Bath, and despite the worrying aspect of the name, we went for Pomphrey Hill.

As luck(?) would have it, Ira Rainey (one of them there Twitter folk: @IraRainey) was run director for the day, so I had a ready source of information for the event, and it would be a good excuse to meet him face to face. (In a public environment, in case he turned out to be a mad axe-murderer.) He proved to both supply good information, recommending trail shoes rather than road shoes, and not be a mad axe-murderer (at least, not on a Saturday morning...)

A cold and frosty morning for a run. (Credit: Ira Rainey)

I wasn't too keen on the idea of three laps, but on the other hand, I'd raced in the Street 5k series early in the week, and that consisted of five laps, so three didn't seem quite so bad. The run briefing was fun and interactive, and definitely one that other parkruns could learn from. For example, asking if any runners have hit an "anniversary run" helps to avoid cliquishness that might otherwise set in. With all that done, we were asked to step back behind the line, which ruined my cunning plan to shave half a second off my finishing time!

Pomphrey Hill is quite a small parkrun, typically attracting less than 100 runners: with this in mind, and a look at previous results, I knew that I should be running in and around the top 10, an unusually lofty position, and one that normally means I've set off far too fast!

So, the course:
In many ways, of the local parkruns I've done in the past couple of months, this one was most similar to our own at Longrun Meadow. It was run entirely on paths around a playing field, though they varied between light gravel, tarmac and bark. The major difference was the hill. Longrun Meadow is pretty pancake like. Pomphrey Hill, as the name might suggest, is not. The cry of "Up Pomphrey!" during the run briefing gave me the idea that this possibly was not "just" a hill. Actually, as Ira pointed out at the end, it's only actually just under 40 ft of climb. However, the steepness, combined with the fact that this was the spongy bark-covered part of the course made it more sapping than perhaps it should have been. Of course, what goes up must come down, and in its own way, the descent was as difficult as the ascent: the frosty morning meant that despite the salt that had been put down, footing was a little hairy on the tarmac path back down the hill.

The great advantage of multiple laps is the obvious fact that after the first time around, you know what's coming and can adjust your pace in anticipation: be that slowing for a hill, or accelerating because there isn't far left. The disadvantage is that when you have just got to the top of a hill, you are aware that you still have to run up it another twice!! Still, on balance I think I actually quite enjoyed the shorter laps, as it helped me to maintain a more consistent pace than I typically manage at Longrun Meadow.

Back to my run:
I spent much of the race in tenth place, and pushed up to eighth on the climb Up Pomphrey on the final lap. Despite actually being slower up and down the hill on my third lap, I held on to eighth place, and even put in a trademark sprint finish to cement it. Once I'd finished I looped back on the course a little bit to cheer on my wife, who was coming around to start her final lap, and had a chat to a couple of the other runners. Unsurprisingly for a parkrun, particularly a small one, everyone was very friendly and chatty: it's great to be part of such a nice community, even when miles from home!

Final analysis: I finished in 21:05, my second fastest parkrun anywhere, which was something of a surprise given how much harder the course felt (and the fact that my watch said 21:22, but no more about that!) My wife completed her first parkrun since July, since when she has been beset with chest problems. All in all, a good fun morning, and a course we both want to go back to.

Brent Knoll: race report

In mid-October, I completed my second half-marathon, Exeter's Great West Run (you can read about how I did here), which was my last major race of the year. However, to end my season, I decided to book in the Brent Knoll race. Brent Knoll is a 137 metres (449 feet) high hill a couple of miles from Burnham-on-Sea. Apparently, one of King Arthur's knights, "Ider son of Nuth", went to the hill on a quest to slay three giants. Or so says Wikipedia. While I didn't spot any giants, I can report that the hill itself certainly felt like a giant one!

The race started at a very sociable time: 11:30. I know that it isn't really a practical time to start a summer race, but at this time of the year, I certainly appreciated the later start. I travelled up on my own, and didn't know of anyone else doing the race, but as I was idling around waiting for everything to get going, I heard a cry of "Ben". I ignored it. Yes, I'm called Ben, and yes, that's what was shouted, but I just assumed it was for someone else. When the shout was repeated, louder, I decided to pay some attention, and saw Rob, Kerry, Chris, Eliza and Louise from my running club!

Louise, Eliza, Chris and me, looking very
clean prior to the race. (Photo credit: Rob Murr)

After posing for a few photos, we headed off to the start line, where I saw a fellow parkrunner, Andy, and had a quick chat to him. Before we knew it though, the (pretty quiet) announcer at the start called 3-2-1-Go, and we shot off. Knowing that Andy tends to beat me at parkrun, I let him ahead of me, but then stuck pretty close behind him. At least, I did until I saw him hopping out of a muddy puddle: his shoe had come off! The route, which heads out from Burnham to Brent Knoll, is flat for the first mile and a half, which I completed in about 7:30 min/mile. The subsequent mile and a half was done at about 10:50 min/mile. That mile and a half included the two significant hill climbs.

The first climb was the smaller of the two, but the terrain made it, in my opinion, much the harder. It was the slowest part of the race, and there were a couple of points that I was genuinely on my hands and feet, scrambling for some, any, sort of grip. More than once a fistful of grass stopped me from slipping back down the slope. To add to the chaos, everyone had their own idea of which route was the best, and this resulted in mass of bodies all frantically trying to just reach the top. Despite my worries that it would only take one overeager person near the top to slip and take us all out, the climb was eventually completed, and the course levelled back out for a while.

I would love to say that the level section allowed me to regain my energy and breath to attack the second hill. Actually, I just ran like a mad person to try and make up for the "time lost" scrambling up the hill, and as a result I slowed to a walk almost as soon as the second incline began. The footing was much better this time though, and after a while there were even steps. Oh, the luxury. Despite this, no one around me looked to even be contemplating running, and I certainly wasn't going to be the only idiot! But on reaching the top, the first stride off the step was back into a run. No time to stop and admire the wondrous views, ya know, this is a race!

Okay, I did have a glance around and take in what I could, and it was stunning, but I certainly didn't have the time to do it justice. A quick half loop of the top, and we were heading back down again. For this section of the race I have to thank the chap in front of me, who demonstrated an effective technique which I shamelessly copied. I'm sure all fell runners are aware of it, but it is essentially to continue to lean slightly forwards, and to zig-zag down the hill. The pair of us passed a number of runners as we descended. In the back of my mind, the next descent was starting to loom large: I'd struggled to scramble up it, how the heck was I going to safely get down it?!

Well, as it turns out, with a commando roll.

My mind began to buzz about the hill as we approached it: I didn't know how people would be attempting it: crawling back down, scrambling, sliding? It turned out, just running. The runner who was now in front of me (not the downhill expert) lost his footing at one point and slid a couple of metres on his bum, and then in the same place, my foot went completely from under me. I have little recollection of exactly how I rolled, but the mud was on my elbow, back and bum. Thankfully, after one roll I was back on my feet, and still running down the hill at pace. Amazingly too, I'm bruise-free!

With that descent safely (ish) navigated, it was just the level slog back to the start/finish, though by this stage, my legs were feeling decidedly tired! With just over a mile to go I was passed by another runner, and after a short argument, I convinced my legs to speed up a little and keep pace with him. I essentially dragged myself along behind him, and then, like the bastard that I am, I found that little bit extra and passed him in a sprint finish.

In fact, I was then told off by Rob and Kerry, as I'd ruined their photos by running too fast. They suggested that I go back and do the finish again to get better ones. I demurred.

I finished with a time of 51:11, which was probably faster than I was expecting to go, although the conditions were probably better than in the past couple of years, which I'd used as my benchmark for times. Andy came in about a minute after me, having lost his shoe twice more during the race: possibly tighter lacing is needed! I was surprised, but pleased, to receive a finisher's medal, as I hadn't seen anything about one in the race information!

So, it might have seemed mad to make my celebratory end of season race a muddy hill climb, but all in all, I had a great time, and will probably be back again next year!

The off-season: 11 top tips for things to do during enforced rest

After the Great West Run in October, I always planned to let my body have a bit of a rest. In fact, I was basically prepared to give it the rest of October and all of November. Now, admittedly, this wasn't complete rest. Just dropping down to a comfortable three runs a week, totalling about 12-15 miles. Apparently though, my body didn't appreciate the efforts I was going to, and took matters into its own hands. Or more accurately, lungs.

Which left me with more time on my hands than I expected to have. So here are my 11 top tips for things to do during the off-season.*

  1) Book races
Okay, so I might be ill now, but that's no reason not to book out the whole of January, February and March with races right? I joked to a friend yesterday that my "long-term planner" is actually just my race diary. It wasn't actually a joke. I don't race as regularly as many, but I've got three races definitely booked, and another four pencilled in. Just in the first three months of next year. Oops.

  2) Buy winter kit
That first day that you step out the door and think "by jove, it's cold" (or however your mental voice would phrase it) is the time to stock up on winter running gear. I've been pretty good this year, and only picked up a couple of things so far: an extra hi-viz t-shirt, and a compression top that matches my running club vest. Because, you know, I don't want to clash.

  3) Sort running kit drawer
While we're on the topic of the kit, is it really still necessary to have four different vests in the drawer? Now that it's cold I'm surely going to do clothes washing often enough to only need a couple of those right? And where did I hide those gloves away? And what is that?

Okay. I haven't actually sorted it yet. I keep looking at it
and then finding something else to do. Can't think why.

  4) Watch a box-set / complete a video game / read a trilogy
Remember that box-set you got for Christmas, but never managed to watch because you were out running? Now you can watch all 24 episodes! Or that video game you started, but then just sort of... forgot about. Or that trilogy that looks really good, but you're worried that if you don't read them quickly, you'll forget who all the characters are. Seriously, I've completed about 25% of Grand Theft Auto during this "rest", and that isn't a small game.

  5) Volunteer at parkrun
If you can't run... volunteer! I don't think that slogan will catch on. Also, it turns out that if you go and volunteer on a cold day with horizontal driving rain, and a chest infection, you then develop a fever to go with it. I don't recommend the pair, individually or paired up. So, if you're resting due to illness, maybe skip this idea.

  6) Read everybody else's blogs and get jealous
Actually, now that I think about it, this one isn't ideal. I mean, it's great to be able to catch up with what you're all doing and stuff. But seriously people, why don't you all take a couple of weeks off too, just to make sure that I don't get jealous. Thank you.

  7) Write a training plan
New season: new plan. In my case, the new plan is basically the same as the old plan, but with two extra runs added in, and a longer long run. I'm hoping that nobody notices that both of the extra runs have been added on the same day. I'm sure mentioning it won't make it any more obvious. Ho hum.

On the back of an envelope, obviously.

  8) Write your Christmas list
This probably only works if you're reading this roughly when it is published. If you're catching up, or randomly found this on Google and it's February, maybe give it a miss. But otherwise, start scribbling that list down: new trainers, new Garmin, that swanky Nike top with the thumb-holes in the sleeves...

  9) Eat
Because it's a proven fact that the next best thing to running is eating. Try out some new recipes: plenty of those that took too long to consider when you had to factor a run in are now perfectly do-able. Of course, you might need to think about going for slightly less calorific options, but that just adds another challenge into the cooking, and might expand your repertoire! Me - I'm thinking Chocolate Fondant and a couple of new curries. Not together. Probably.

Sadly, this is not one I've made. Hopefully mine will
look this ace though. (credit: Robin, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

  10) Polish and sort medals
So, they've been hung up on the wall for a while now. They could probably do with a dust and polish. Now that I look at them, the display is a little imbalanced too: all the long ones are on one side, which looks a bit odd. But if I move that one over, the colours will clash. This could take a while.

  11) Rest
Oh yeah, I sort of forgot about this one, but I think it's pretty important. Rest. Whether enforced or not, let the body have a bit of a break so that any ongoing niggles can sort themselves out and you'll be fit and raring to go for the next season .. next week .. tomorrow.

So there you go, 11 things to keep you going when you're not running. I'm sure I've missed some important things out though, what do you do to stay occupied and reasonably sane during some down-time from running? Do you just go crazy?

* By "top" I mean, the first ones I thought of. And by "tips" I don't mean suggestions. Actually, they're just "things".

parkrun tourism: Yeovil Montacute

A couple of weeks ago, I headed out for a little more parkrun tourism. It came hot on the heels of a visit to Killerton, and was the last week in a five-week absence from my home parkrun (rest, illness, Killerton, rest, Yeovil). I was quite tempted to just head to my home run after so long away, but this bit of tourism had been planned for a while, so I stuck with the plan.

Location:
This is technically the next closest parkrun to me after Longrun Meadow, although the differing quality of the roads means that it takes more or less the same time to do the 22 mile drive to Yeovil Montacute as it does to drive 28 miles to Killerton. Like Killerton, the Yeovil Montacute run is located in the grounds of a National Trust property. Unlike Killerton, the route goes right past the house, with the east façade (pictured) providing a gorgeous backdrop to the run. Admittedly, despite the size and glamour of the building, my attention was elsewhere while running!

The stunning Montacute House (credit: Mike Searle, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Terrain:

Again, this varied completely from either of Longrun Meadow or Killerton. The route was entirely run on grass, and undulated throughout. The course was reasonably dry when I ran it, but I suspect that some of the ditches that I dropped down into would get quite tasty in the winter months. In fact, the ditch jumps, which Sarah (@mia79gbr) raved about so much in her blog post back in April, were the main reason I wanted to do this course so much. What I did forget reading in her post was that there was a "massive hill in the last kilometre". This did catch me a little by surprise. It shouldn't have done, but it did. Underfoot, the course is most similar to a cross-country course: my trail shoes performed admirably, but a set of XC spikes would probably be the most effective. Once it gets a bit wetter, this isn't a course I'd recommend attempting in normal road shoes, I suspect you'd slip all over the place!

Course:

The route takes in one "little lap" and one "big lap". At the end of the first lap, the little one, you are running directly towards the house, the finish and all the cheering supporters. This provides a similar boost to the traditional lap set-up at Longrun Meadow, although I didn't see a similar boost in pace! The big lap then completes an entire circuit of the grounds.

Summarising, I really enjoyed the run. I ran a slower time than I've achieved at either Killerton or Longrun, although my pacing was pretty awful, so that will have played a part. It is less well-attended than either of those as well, which did make the latter part of the race a little uncompetitive: it was pretty clear that I would finish 17th, no higher and no lower, for the last mile of the run. That said, as with every parkrun I've attended, the support was great from all the volunteers and spectators, and I would love to go back when it's a little bit wetter! Additionally, I'm really glad to have three such completely different courses as my three nearest parkrun events.