Better news.
Last Wednesday’s ailing calf opened the door (….did you know a calf could do that?) to a dissolute weekend. I fear I take rest and recovery all too seriously. An excess of low living followed: beer and saturated fat outside the house, and Chianti, spicy turkey casserole, sausages and blue cheese within.
On Friday, something useful did happen: a visit to Phil the sports therapist for a half hour of painful, but helpful, calf manipulation. As I slid off the massage table, barely conscious, I was expecting to see on the floor beneath me, strips of bloody, wriggling flesh, freshly gouged from my lower limbs. There’s always a brief period when I wonder how such a treatment can be beneficial, but within an hour or so, I’m already starting to feel better, and happy with the investment.
As ever, the hangman remained all too cheerful as he plied his vile trade. The incongruously perky dialogue compared running challenges to come. Phil blithely mentioned his main focus for 2010: a 100 mile race up and down the major peaks of the Lake District, involving a net ascent of 23,000 feet. Suddenly my own goals seemed all too modest.
Hyperbole aside, the massage was a good thing to have done, and by someone who knows his business.
There was the pencilled-in possibility of a jog or gym visit on Sunday, but I passed it up, partly because there was a lingering soreness in the calf, but more because there was a lingering soreness in the head. I’d popped over the road to watch some early Saturday evening football in the pub, and it had evolved into an unexpectedly over-hearty occasion.
Instead of exercise, I ended up in Carters of Caversham, to check out some rigid insoles called Superfeet. I’d been tipped off by Phil that these could help my calf problems. Long story short: I looked at them, tried them out, then had a lengthy sales pitch which completely convinced me that these were the answer. Great. Just what I need. Then I bought something else instead.
Just as I was reaching for my credit card to pay for the Superfeet, a casual remark persuaded me to look at some insoles called Conform’able, which are moulded to the exact shape of the sole of your foot while you wait. So these are the same as the other ones, except they are customised to my feet? Yes, they said. I spent the next 5 embarrassing minutes standing on a platform in the shop, my bare feet embedded in a sort of dense pad which made the mould. Then the flat insoles, heated, were laid across the mould, and I had to spend another couple of minutes standing on them, until they’d taken on the shape of my foot. A couple of minutes to cool, and voila, I had two tailored insoles for my running shoes.
The big disappointment was that they weren’t as rigid as I’d hoped, and I therefore wondered if they would really stand up to the job. Had I gone for the right option? At £45, this wasn’t a cheap decision to get wrong. To his credit, the sales guy was willing to let me revert to the original Superfeet plan, which had a much more positive presence in my shoe. But was this necessarily a good thing? Was the fact that I couldn’t really feel the moulded insoles a bad thing? Or was it the entire point of them?
With the shop about to shut, I opted for the moulded soles. Then spent the rest of the day regretting it.
I continued to think I’d made the wrong decision through yesterday, when I took them out for a 4.15 mile plod, for some weird reason deciding for the first time ever to try running without wearing socks. The idea of the me-shaped insole had somehow seduced me into thinking it seemed right. And it nearly was. But socklessness is to an Asics shoe as a red rag is to a bull. For years I was unable to wear Asics much beyond about 5 miles. Their shoes harboured a notorious seam that lacerated generously proportioned feet like mine. Recent models seem to have got round the problem, or so I thought. Removing the proprietary insole, with the built-up side, and then going commando in the foot department, was to give hostage to fortune.
Two miles into the run, the rubbing and pinching started in earnest. It was uncomfortable, but weirdly, I seemed not to care. Limping the last half mile has been standard recently, but to do so for a reason unconnected with the calf was a near-pleasant novelty.
Today I returned to the way of the sock for 5.2 gluey miles around the bird lake, and along the canal towpath. The alarmingly irrepressible Sweder wrote today of his 10 mile run on ground that had been recently snow covered, describing its stickiness in a typically colourful way. Does thawed ice and slush bestow an unusual adhesiveness to mud? Seems like it.
Anyway, even with socks, the scuffed skin wasn’t going to hold out indefinitely, and sure enough, about 3 miles in, the embryonic blister gave me a cheery wave, and started its work. Despite all that, the simple fact is that I’ve managed to bank nearly 9½ miles over these two days, without any convincing sign of calf trouble. Just a bit of residual soreness: nothing new.
Has it just started to drift away again, as it eventually did last year? Or was the massage the key? Maybe the insoles really have helped. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But whatever it is, things are better than they were. My main concern now is general fitness. With only 11 days left before the Almeria half, I’m anxious about my stamina. I could feel it draining out of me today after just 4 miles or so, though the sticky mud will have contributed something there. I need to put in a decent long run this weekend. At least 10 miles, though 12 would be better. If I can do that, and keep running on alternate days, and manage a few spinning sessions, I might just be able to claw back enough confidence and fitness to make the Almeria run tolerable. Realistically though, I suspect it will be quite tough. If the leg behaves, and if I don’t slip off the path of righteous living, the Wokingham half, 3 weeks after Almeria, should be a better day.
As for the sub-2 hour half marathon target, I’m still keen to achieve it this year, though Reading, on March 21, might just be too soon. We’ll see. A lot can be achieved in 8 weeks and 5 days. I certainly hope so: that’s pretty much my deadline for having knocked off all my annual objectives at work. Bah! It’s that stressful time of the year.
Thank god for running.
