Wake up...

I peel my eyes open and look around; my best friend is standing over me, and I’m on his living room floor. It was our school friend’s wedding last night. I remember getting in, ditching my clothes at my feet, and collapsing onto his couch – obviously during the early hours I decided the floor was the more comfortable option.

It was 7am on a Monday morning, we’d got in at 2am and I was tired. Fortunately, I’d booked the day off work to recover, but, as my mate works in a school, he couldn’t. So, what would any other person in my situation do? Go home, and sleep it off of course….

…What did I do? Go home, get changed into my running gear, and go for a 10km run! Running it off really is the best way to recover from a drinking session!

Weddings always bring you together with people you haven’t seen for a long time and one of you always utters (often in a drunken state) “we’ll have to keep in touch – I’ve missed you”. Of course this happened, but, pushing closer to 30 than 20, you realise that, in reality, you’re not going to, and you are somewhat set in your ways. This is especially the case if you have an ‘other half’ – and this is fair enough, everyone has their own priorities, but it never ceases to amaze/disturb/worry me how easy it is to drift apart from people you thought you would always be around and spend time with.

I won’t veer off onto a long rambling “what if…” set of scenarios of how all the decisions I made meant I lost good friends and relationships, but it did get me thinking about something I wrote on 31^st December 2011 – I wouldn’t call it a set of resolutions, more a set of reflections on different aspects of my life, and where I wanted to be over the year.

I’m not going to go into them all, as some are very personal, but there is something I wrote about my health, and my knee. “I’ve undergone physio treatment for strained medial collateral ligament damage, for iliotibial band tightness and strain. Despite these, and seemingly overcoming them, pain just under the knee cap occurs when running – as usual, left knee. I’m booked in to see a private knee specialist in 2 days’ time (2^nd January of this year).”

Since then I’ve had an MRI scan, ultrasound, and physio… Here I am today, having run 6.5 miles on Saturday, 12.5 miles on Sunday, and a quick (2.5 mile) jog around the block this morning.

I’ve come a long way, and I’m very happy about it, but I still feel there is a long way to go; but that’s ok, because I love a challenge, and pushing myself. This week I’ll be going back to train with Liverpool Running Club for a track session - I can’t wait, having never done anything like that before! I’ve also got the Mersey Tunnel 10k on Sunday. I completed this last year in about 41:30, so I’ll be looking to better this and my Manchester 10k time from last month. I’m really going to try for a sub 40 minute 10k; this would signal a noticeable improvement, and marker, in my fitness. It also gives me a chance of a PB; 39:48 is my current best, so it would be nice to deliver a new one before the first half of 2012 is out!!

I’ll update after the race, hopefully with a good report (and time!) to boot! Until next time… The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle :)

Running Club

Training has been going really well – managed another 10 mile run for my long slow run on Sunday and hope to increase the distance of that over the next couple of months.

Last night however, I trained with Liverpool Running Club. I have for a long time been umm’ing and arr’ing about joining a running club, as everyone who I’ve spoken to about them loves it, and tells me how they have improved as a runner. My worry has always been that whilst I always push myself in running to become faster, stronger, better (there’s a song in there somewhere I’m sure!!) it would become too much of a chore if I joined a club.

I pretty much told myself during injury that if I got back to fitness that I would join a running club – I just needed to give myself a push to go through with it.

I’m so glad I did because it was brilliant fun – being so used to pounding the streets on my own to run with others of similar ability and to do a structured run was fantastic. Although I think my competitiveness may have come out – I only ever run with other people in a race, so I found myself edging towards the front of the group all the time. I’m sure this will change over time.

You may be wondering what did we do in a running session; just run, surely?!

The straight forward answer is yes, but we completed a few ‘drills’ on the run to get the heart rate going, and to give me DOMS in my left glute today, uncool!!! A chain run was the first exercise; all running in a single file line and the person at the back sprints to the front then slows down to a jog.

There were three exercises that followed; with the first two splitting the group in half and a one v one session of short sprints taking place.

Unfortunately we got locked in the park we were running in and had to climb over a brick wall to get out. Luckily it wasn’t very high and we all had a laugh about climbing over it.

The atmosphere whilst training was great, and the range of ages made for fun banter – it had a really good feel to it.

So… I’ll definitely be going back again, and hopefully I’ll sign for them (if they’ll have me :p )

Due to the bank holiday on Tuesday there is no training, so I’ll have to wait until Thursday, which will be a track session day… I can feel my competitiveness coming out even more as I type!!

Happy running!!!