Lame excuses

Welcome to the new WordPress home.

The minimalism isn’t intentional.

All efforts so far have been directed at importing the content from the old, hand-coded, HTML site, and only now can I think about addressing the decor and spartan furnishing.

What’s really needed on this red letter day is a sustained, sonorous note of optimism.

Ah.

Instead, I offer up the absolute opposite: the thought that I’m staring at the possibility that my running days may be over. If indeed they ever began.

This melancholic swamp looks familiar enough, but I don’t recall being in this deep.

Two full weeks of rest after Almeria seemed like a good enough period of recuperation. Apart from a solitary spinning session a couple of days after returning, I did nothing beyond work and walking to the pub.

Monday this week, and it was time. The ceremonial garb went on, and headed out the back door with me inside. No surprise that I felt unfit and heavy, but I still seemed to be bowling along through the bright afternoon at a reasonable lick, and with no desire to walk.

But.

But on 2.3 miles, the left calf starting tingling a bit. Another 200 metres, and it just crumpled into the same old painful, crampy thing that’s been dogging me for weeks now. As usual, it was stop and hop to the side of the path, where I found a railing to lean on. I tried a calf stretch but it wasn’t going to work. And so, once again, I ended up limping home under a black cloud.

Now, 3 days later, it’s once again being seductively “come and get me” pain-free, but I can feel gloomily confident that another attempted run would end the same way.

The last entry began with a description of a visit to the gait analysis clinic, and the prescription to build up some core strength, to help change the way my feet hit the ground. That advice wasn’t forgotten, but the plan, or the assumption, was that I could do that while still getting out for at least a couple of short runs each week. I’d already had 2 or 3 days of tedious carpet-squirming before venturing out, thinking this would help. It was a mis-thought, as Hillary Clinton might have said.

So what now?

Perhaps my best chance is to lay off running completely until I start getting some result from the exercises.

Perhaps there’s no perhaps about it. I see no alternative.

Indications are that the calf won’t heal itself without some assistance from me; without something else changing. So I guess I have to knuckle down into the spinning, stretching, and core strength groove, and see what happens.

My big enemy at present is apathy. I need to believe I can do this, or it won’t work. The other impediment is that M is halfway through a 4 weeks stint away from home at the moment (returning at weekends),  and this has done my diet no good at all. I’m like a kid who’s been left in charge of the sweet shop, gobbling the sort of food that’s usually off-limits, and wandering out to the pub to watch the match and enjoy a bit of human company. I’m not being excessive, but it’s not good to be happening at all. 

A worry is the races I have, or had, coming up. Wokingham this weekend is a non-starter. Will I make the Reading Half in 4 weeks time? And the Connemara Half 3 weeks after that? If I’m to get round these exotic targets, something has to change, and quickly. Something more than just the decorations.