1/11/15 – Sunday, Bloody Sunday
When we’ve been training Half Marathons, Sunday has generally been our day for a longer run. Longer, in our case means more than 5k: anywhere between 8 and 20k (5 to 12 miles in old money) and, frankly, can often be effort to get out of bed and motivated for.
Not today, however, still in the first flushes of marathon acceptance, I fairly sprang from my pit. A sunny day and an unseasonably warm day – nearly 18C! – helps. So I’m moving up from 8k last week to 10k. Sue is sticking with the 8k for now, whilst her leg is still delicate. My knee’s protests seem to have died down overnight, although the ankle still feels a bit odd.
A flattish circular route from home was completed in a sedentary 1:08:40, with no complaints from either ankle or knee. My best 10k time is just under the hour, but I’ve been nowhere close to that since the summer when a month-long trip to the States made both me and the scales groan when they topped 16 stones for the first time in four years. That’s a fair way back down the dark path.
Since then, despite the increased exercise, it’s proving more difficult than before to shift the excess and haven’t yet managed to get back under 15 stone. Ideally I’d like to be nearer 13 and half stone come the Marathon, but I think that might be wishful thinking. Still, I did get there once and as mentioned before, it was when I wasn’t even really trying, well in the beginning anyway.
The main reason was actually Palace, or more specifically, their Community Foundation. Back in the winter of 2011 they began running 10 week free courses at Selhurst Park for men over 40, in conjunction with Croydon Council and the Fit4Life campaign, to educate about diet, exercise and general help them to lose weight. Over 40’s male demographic was initially targeted as research had shown they’d had the least access to nutritional advice at school and statistically were now at high risk of health issues.
The hour-long sessions comprised of a presentation from one of Palace’s community coaches focussing on one particular element: Fat content in food, Salt and the like. Then some gentle football training exercises culminating in a weigh-in. Did I mention that this was all Free!?!
The weigh-ins were lower key than WeightWatchers: between you, the Palace coaches and the scales, but with 20 other guys in the room, it quickly became competitive, with weight loss and step count competitions being run across the 10 weeks. The courses were an amazing success, so much so that the option was given to continue playing five-a-side and weighing-in for a small fee each week for those that wanted to keep up the good work.
The courses were always immediately over-subscribed and it took me until the summer to get on the third one. Admittedly, the carrot for getting to play on the Selhurst pitch was a strong incentive although I’d scored plenty of goals there back in the late 80s. I was once the Club’s official mascot dressed in huge foam Eagle which looked more like a parrot – but I’m digressing.
I lost almost 2 stone in the 10 weeks and went onto participate in the weekly 5-a-side sessions. I was always pretty hopeless at football, but loved playing and the weekly sessions became the highlight of me week. And though, I say so myself, I could actually hold my own with my peers and seemed to have a boundless store of energy, that would have come in handy back in my regular Sunday Football days. It’s all relative, of course, playing against guys my own age and older, clearly made things easier than trying to stop some young whippersnapper.
Whenever I’d tried to lose weight before, I’d get down to 16 and half stone and the weight loss would grind to a halt and I’d start creeping back up as my commitment to my diet. Sure enough, for a couple of weeks my weight stabilised at 16:04, then suddenly it dropped by half a stone in week and, aside from the odd blip continued on a downward trend until I hit 14:07 stone.
I guess at the age of 47 to take up regular football again, some 5 years after hanging up my boots for good, was asking for it. Come the February, my right knee was feeling really week. As usual I tried ignoring it, but it was getting to stage where I had difficulty with stairs, never mind, kicking a pigskin. Favouring my left wasn’t an option on the pitch, as I’d only ever used that for standing on.
In the last few seconds of the last session, we were unexpectedly up by the odd goal against far stronger opposition, I went it for a desperate block to stop my mate Aidan, who was through on goal and overstretched. It was like an explosion in my knee, I could barely breathe with the pain and lay face down moaning on the frozen astroturf for what seemed like an age. When I finally did manage to get up with help, one side of my face was completely covered in those black pellets, which gave everyone a laugh. All except Aidan, who was managing to both protest his innocence (and to be fair, for once it wasn’t his fault) and demand that the game be restarted at the same time (he doesn’t take defeat well).
Finally, it was time to admit defeat and go and see a specialist. He told me straight away that I needed at Op. and wouldn’t be back on the football pitch for at least 6 months. A number of factors including organising and participating in a charity walk from Palace to Reading for the end of season game there meant I couldn’t actually have the operation until July. Without strenuous exercise other than the walk, I felt I did well to keep the weight reasonably stable.
During my rehab, Sue had decided to take up running herself, with the ultimate aim of running the LM. She was starting with a couch-to-5K program and as I began to test out the strength on my repaired knee – I found myself running alongside her in a hotel gym. Expecting only to last a few minutes. I was amazed that I found that I could run quite happily, albeit slowly, for almost half an hour covering nearly 4k. The energy I’d belatedly found on the footie pitch was still there after nine months. This was a big revelation to me; continuous running was never my thing. I hated it at School, from the athletics track to the old Cross-Country course across the ploughed fields of Hayes farms – it all still makes me shudder. I was always last and would cop regular bollockings from the teachers when I would dawdle back half an hour after the lesson had ended, right in the middle of their lunch break.
Early in 2013, I’d gone back to playing again, although I was aware that my knee still felt weak. I hoped it’d strengthen naturally, so took up running to try and help. Aidan introduced us to the local Parkrun and I bought some proper running gear. With such a major increase in exercise, the weight continued to melt away and I proudly passed the ‘5 stones lost’ mark. I could comfortably run 5K in under 30 minutes. My high blood pressure was gone, my cholesterol was way down and I did away with my daily gout medication. I felt great… if only people would stop telling me I looked ill!
On a whim, Sue and I entered an 8K race around the Olympic Park and Stadium, followed swiftly by a couple of local 10Ks. I had been truly bitten by the running bug – sadly though my knee had other ideas, but I’ll save that for another time, you must be bored senseless. This was never meant to turn into ‘War & Peace’.