04/04/20 – Running in Adversity

“Well, at least we still able to get out and run” was pretty much our first thought after lockdown was announced. Even in the strangest days that we now find ourselves in it has been good to be able to run.

We are both keen not to let our current stage of Marathon fitness slide so have devised a weekly running plan to keep us both ‘at a level’.

From Sunday to Friday, there’s a couple of easy miles, a couple of tempo miles and a couple of 5k’s – one of which is hill training on the usual local route.

On Saturdays, Sue does between an hour and an hour & half running locally, whereas I’ve been maintaining the morning parkrun tradition, albeit as part of a longer run. This involves running to the start of our local parkrun, South Norwood Country Park. Technically, that’s not our closest one, but I think that avoiding the Royal Bethlem Hospital parkrun course might be wise in the circumstances – indeed, I’m not even sure if the grounds are open to the public right now.

I’ve always found it quite difficult to add a longer run onto a parkrun. However, without the formalities of an actual parkrun, it seems much easier to keep going, rather than starting afresh after bar-coding. I leave home earlier than parkrun time, usually around 8.20am and simply just check my watch as I cross the start line. I then follow the older course which stick mostly to gravel paths, although the stones there have a habit of getting into my shoes. As long as I’m running some of the course during the 9am to 10am period, I can still kid myself it’s parkrun.

I decided after my very first lockdown run that I’m not going to harp-on in this blog about the way people are interpreting/ignoring socially distancing as that would run to pages. Suffice to say, I’m beginning to fear for my mental health – every time I go out for run, I come back annoyed about something. Reliving it through writing will simply wind me up even further, but I’m digressing again…

I’m aiming for 10 miles on Saturdays, including the three and a bit miles of parkrun . I’m not looking at my times for the whole thing, but have been keeping a note of my parkrun performance. So far they have all been over 35 minutes, well above my parkrun average of 31:12. There are three reasons for this: 1) when I do parkrun I’m usually starting fresh, not after 1.5 miles of running; 2) sounds obvious, but it’s not an actual parkrun, there’s no other runners about that I can pace myself against; and 3) perhaps the most troubling of all, that damn glute! It just isn’t getting any better.

Naturally, the physio sessions have had to come to a stop. I had one further physical session the day before lockdown and then two video sessions with someone else. Unfortunately, the treatment that my glute was most responding to was the massage part, rather than the daily exercises, so we are pretty much back to square one. It’s not enough to stop me in my tracks, but it is definitely adversely affecting my gait and speed.

I’m just going to have to continue with the running routine and pick up the treatment again, once we are out of lockdown, whenever that might be.

I’m certainly not holding my breath here…