D-day

Perhaps I'm being just a tad melodramatic in comparing today's run with the Normandy landings but it doesn't feel too great a leap to me this morning!

This is a post about my groin. You have been warned.

To re-cap:

• First started getting pain in lower abs late August last year. Ran through it and it got progressively worse while also being misdiagnosed by physio.
• By late October I'd virtually had to stop running and was getting twinges through the day too.
• Went to see a consultant early in March who diagnosed Sportsman's hernia and referred me to a sports physio he recommends.
• Began series of core stability exercises while gently starting running again.
• also began trying to engage core muscles while running.
• After about 6 weeks there was no presence at all of pain before, during or after.
• After about 12 weeks I slowly started to drop the daily core stability exercises.
• Still no recurrence even with speed training and racing, and long runs up to 13 miles.

However...

...for a few weeks I've felt a hint of 'something' - difficult to pinpoint, not pain as such, short lived and possibly imaginary...

...then on Wednesday last week I could definitely feel it after the Castle Douglas race - a pain in the lower left abs towards the inguinal canal, that stayed for 3 days. Since then the pain has eased off but the left groin area feels loose or disjointed a bit.

Its a worry. A big one. Last year gave me 4 months off and left me feeling depressed and having the prospect of £2.5k's worth of operation to fund.

I'm really hoping this will just be a warning and that if I start the core exercises again, after a week's rest, and engage the core muscles during every run it'll disappear again and can be held in check permanently by these actions. The fear is that there's still an underlying weakness that will just get worse as pace or mileage increase. Last year a week or more of rest didn't make any difference at all.

Tonight is a 7/8 mile tempo run with the club and this morning a very gentle 2.5 mile jog with Bethan. I'm really hoping to get through both pain free and will know by Thursday morning - no pain by then means its nipped in the bud.

Nerd porn

After 10 days without really having a laptop its good to be back online on my new netbook. I've even pushed the boat out and bought MS Office so there will be no more messing about with MS Works spreadsheets.

Its amazing how much is stored on a pc - pictures, videos, weight/running/training/racing spreadsheets, lists - all now lost.

One thing that is good to be back with is Garmin Connect. Fortunately, as its not stored locally all the old data is still there and I've been able to look at the last few runs. Twostick out - the 14 mile LSR from the Sunday before last and the Castle Douglas race.

The LSR looks to have been slightly hillier than a normal LSR by about 200ft extra of elevation with pretty constant ups and downs but the first half generally downhill and the second half more generally uphill, giving mile splits of:

8:57
8:15
8:17
8:10
8:00
8:15
8:28
8:22
8:11
8:20
8:27
8:12
8:19
8:28

The notable increases/decreases look to match pretty well to changes in gradient, so happy with that.

Castle Douglas was more of a surprise. I'd remembered the course as constantly undulating gently and the first mile or two bein generally downhill. That doesn't seem to be the case. Mile one and two look to be billiard table flat, mile three had a long uphill drag and short decline giving a small net ascent, mile four was up and down a fair bit and mile 5 had two downs and an up to give a slight net descent.

That gave rise to confirmed mile splits of:

7:15
7:17
7:29
7:12
6:43

I don't think it tells me anything that will change the plan for Birchwood though.

More camp than Kenneth Williams

That was my last week in Dumfries & Galloway, staying on the shores of Loch Ken.

It's funny how holidays are never quite what you'd envisaged they'd be. In this case I'd had a ragged notion that the holiday would include hiring a mountain bike for half a day, 3/4 runs, some swimming in the loch, lots of hill walking and several trips out ion the loch in a canoe or kayak. I'd also kidded myself that it would be a few days of healthy eating punctuated with the odd treat for all my physical exploits.

In the event I ran once (the race), did one 4 mile walk up/down a hill in the Galloway forest and had 40 minutes each in a kayak, canoe and rowing boat. I also managed about 20 seconds swimming in the loch. Ah well.

Food wise was even worse. Probably Monday and Tuesday weren't too bad - if you exclude the post race chips and bag of jelly babies that is - but after that it wasn't good. There were few obvious candidates for eating out on an evening and limited to a single gas burner we fell back on fish & chip shops for 3 nights, a disposable barbecue for one and a pile of cheese sandwiches for the other. During the day there was the novelty of frying eggs and bacon at six am, the lure of the on site sweetie shop and three trips to tea shops for scones and or cake. Oh, and a trip to an ice cream parlour.

It was still a decent break though.

Castle Douglas 5 Mile Road Race

This race provided one of the sternest tests yet in my running career.

Not the actual running of the race – that was pretty straightforward – but actually finding out when and where this Brigadoon of races would take place tested my endurance far more than the average weekend long run.

We’d decided to go camping for a few days in Dumfries & Galloway and while trawling the net for likely things to see and do I saw a fleeting reference to a ‘fun run’ as part of Castle Douglas’s Civic Week. I assumed that meant a one mile jog round a park but a bit more Googling found a second oblique reference that suggested it might actually be a 5 mile road race but there was no mention of time or location. Obvious solution: look on runners World’s events listing. Nothing there. OK, try John Schofield’s site: nothing there either. A bit more Googling and I had a date and a time: well, two times actually. It was almost definitely on the 27th and would start at 6.30pm and/or 7pm and would probably start somewhere in or near ‘Lochside Park’. I tried an appeal for information on Runners World’s forums – all that got was a virtual tumbleweed.

It was mentioned as a club championship event on the Dumfries RC website though so I felt sure it must exist and decided to just check with the local Tourist Information when we arrived in the area. They were pretty good and confirmed the location and that the start time was 7pm (the race at 6.30pm was to be a ‘bogie race’ and that’s not what you might think), but also advised calling in at a tea room down the road where the event Chairman would have all the details. When I got there only the Chairman’s wife was in residence and she couldn’t confirm what day or time the run was taking place let alone whether there were entries on the day and recommended I “...just turn up about seven - I’m sure that’ll be fine”.

After considering her advice I got there just after six and was the 5th person to register (so I got an ‘elite’ number), and headed back to the car to kill time until just before seven – the now confirmed start time. The fee was £4 so there’d be no souvenir t-shit/mug/towel but that wouldn’t have been in keeping for such a hidden event!

By the time I got to the start area a few minutes before seven there was quite a throng of runners chatting or warming up as they preferred. Around half were from Dumfries RC, with the remainder from Dumfries Harriers, Annan & District AC, Galloway Harriers, various other Scottish clubs and a fairly small smattering of unattached runners. And me. In the event the lady in the tea room was right – by 7.10 they’d just about finished registering runners and we got underway about 5 minutes later.

The course was a good one – almost all on road aside from the last section back into the park and gently undulating all the way round in a large almost un-marshalled loop, relying on 4 arrow signs to guide any runners as to which turns to take.

My race was pretty good too. Having spent much of the winter away from the sport nursing a groin injury I’m still feeling my way back and the two races I’ve ran (the club 5k handicap and Washburn relay) were both ones where I ran without a plan, set off too quickly and tired in the closing stages so they didn’t really tell me anything about where I was but did give me a few things to learn (see July's last post). So, this time I knew what mile splits I wanted and did my best to stick to them.

I'd set a target for myself of 7m 20s per mile. That was 1s faster than Washburn but for an event that was a mile longer. It would equate to a 10k of 45m 31s - faster than my PB from last year but not quite down at the sort of time I think I'm capable of this year, so, a decent benchmark of progress.

I set of quickly again, aided by a slight downhill, but this time I noticed it and slowed myself up so that mile one was completed in 7:16. By this stage the field had thinned out a bit and a lady runner seemed to be using me to pace her. Letting gravity do it's thing on a short downhill managed to shake her off and took me past 3 others in mile two which stayed pretty even at 7:18.

Mile three continued to undulate but had a little more up than down. During that mile I was passed by one guy early on but passed him again at the end of a long drag and he faded away. Time for mile three was 7m 30s - not sure if that was just the hills or a lack of concentration - I suspect it was maybe the former as by the end of it I had 4 runners in sight ahead of me whenever there was a long straight stretch, which mile three had a lot of.

I could see throughout the penultimate mile that I seemed to be very slowly gaining on the gang of four. They were quite spread out - a stick like veteran from Annan AC, a twenty something lad from Dumfries Harriers who looked like a thin Kurt Cobain, a guy in a yellow vest and a lady from Dumfries Running Club furthest ahead. Maybe mile four was a little flatter but they seemed to spread more by the end of it with me only a few metres behind the vet, who in turn was only a few metres behind the Harrier, then a fair gap to the chap in yellow and probably the same distance as ever between me and the Dumfries lass. I felt less fatigued strangely, as if I was only just truly finding my rhythm, and ran 7m 12s for mile four.

In the early stages of the last mile it was interesting to watch what was happening ahead of me. The vet drew level with the Harrier but didn't pass him and half a minute later the Harrier had pulled away again. I assumed that meant the vet had gambled on an increased effort he couldn't sustain and had shot his bolt, and took the opportunistic approach of passing him there and then.

I'd read, and subsequently practised, that when you pass someone you should sustain the increased speed for a little longer to put distance between you and mentally break them from any notion of going with you. In doing that I found I wasn't far behind the Harrier so decided to be opportunistic again and pass him in the same move. The increased pace felt sustainable so, knowing I was probably approaching the last half mile I carried on at that pace to the finish - running my quickest mile split by some way at 6:44. That felt good.

What didn’t feel so good was the pain for 48hrs afterwards as I was feeling my groin throughout that time (well someone’s got to and I was the only volunteer...) but hopefully I can get that under control again. It’s certainly not as bad as it was last autumn so fingers crossed.

Overall time was 35:29 and an average of 7m 12s (the course measured slightly short). I was 30s behind the Dumfries lass, only 6 behind yellow vest, 12 ahead of the vet, 18 ahead of Kurt Cobain (who the vet evidently passed again), over a minute ahead of the chap who'd passed me and then been passed back and about a minute and a half ahead of the woman who was using me to pace with in the first mile or two. 34th overall out of 108, which considering it was a very clubby event, was good, and the time is the best relative time I've run to date and equates to 44:45 as a 10k time.

So, what have I learned this time?

1) Pacing did make a positive difference - as expected.
2) Patience is indeed a virtue - stick to the pace and you'll get your rewards but...
3) ...continue to 'read' other runners - are they breathing hard, slowing, looking ragged - if so take advantage and pass them, don't slow with them.
4) I seemed to get stronger (relatively and in terms of pace) later in the race, implying I need to do a bit of warming up (which I've neglected thus far this year) and so hit my straps earlier.
5) There's more in the tank, especially with a few pounds more lost, so dropping the target to 7m 10s at Birchwood could be on the cards, particularly as its flatter.

Mind you, all of that is dependent on the ol' groin. More on that later...

The week before last

Proved to be a pretty good week.

I'd set myself the target of consistency in diet and that's pretty much what I got. Result was that by Saturday morning the weight had dropped below 11st 11lb and I felt and looked leaner already. Really pleased with that.

I did go off the rails a bit on the Saturday at my parents Golden Wedding party (with non diet friendly buffet) but was back on track Sunday.

Exercise wise it had gone well too. A couple of trips to the gym to lift some weights, a couple of short swims afterwards, a decent paced club run in the pouring rain on Tuesday, a 5 mile run with Bethan, an easy paced 4 miles along the canal and then a 14 mile long run on the Sunday.

That was the furthest Bethan had ever run and my furthest long run since the autumn. Found it quite tiring though but not as bad as the previous week and certainly at a faster pace.

All in all a good preparation for the week of camping challenges ahead and the race I'd spotted while looking for things to do on holiday...

Father, its been 2 weeks since my last confession...

...but I've got excuses!

The laptop died the Friday before last (so I'm using the work one which, as I'm on leave, feels wrong) and I've had 6 days camping in Scotland. That means there's a fair bit to catch up on which I'll probably spread over a few blogs:

• The week before camping
• The Castle Douglas 5 Mile Road Race
• Camping trip
• Aftermath

That should do it.

More later.

A weekend of excess

Excessive food consumption but also excessive exercise.

Hopefully the latter will cancel out the former.

Saturday was pretty good through the day and I treated myself to a really good gym session. Over the last few months trips to the gym have been hurried affairs - straight in, straight out but on Saturday, with the family out shopping, I took the opportunity to take my time.

I managed a very good weights session with weights up to a point where I'd got slight DOMS in triceps and glutes by Sunday morning, 10 minutes HIIT on the stepper, 30 minutes steady on the cross trainer, 12 minutes on the treadmill, a very quick swim and sauna and even a Costa coffee while I read the Guardian after.

The treadmill was quite pleasing. Generally speaking I avoid them wherever possible. Partly as I don't see the point when you can run outdoors and partly because I find a flat constant speed in a still warm room to be quite difficult. Saturday wasn't too bad though. I had to guess pace a bit but started at 12km/h and increased to 15 km/h. I suspect that for adding in a really short recovery jog; doing 40 minutes when the roads are icy or even practicing running form could all be doable on there. I might add in an occasional use.

After I got in I cooked a vegetable biryani. Of sorts. Unfortunately I didn't look at what I was doing and added brown pilau rice instead of the white the recipe called for. As a result the rice was still hard after the cooking time and I needed to add alot more water and cook it on the stove. That left the whole thing rather more moist and stodgy than I'd wanted but it was OK. Unfortunately, later in the evening I ate several rounds of toast and had a couple of curly wurlys as well as 2 bowls of Weetabix. With sugar! I doubt I'll have gained from that but it will have used up most of the day's planned deficit.

Yesterday was long run day, and due to the heavy rain of the last few days I modified the 'normal' route in a few places in order to stay mainly on road. That left an 11.7 mile run with a few more drags up and down hills than usual and a last 2 miles that were relentlessly uphill.

I found it hard going from the outset. I suspect that was mainly because the previous 36 hours contained a trail race, a reasonable amount of cardio and some weights. In any event I started and finished slowly and finished with an average pace of bang on 9 minute miles. Just about still inside the LSR target pace range but at the opposite end of the range to normal.

After a quick shower, protein shake, and three bread cakes we booked a campsite for the first week of the kids' summer holidays (when I'm off for 2 weeks too) then set off for Langstrothdale to do a short walk. Before reaching Kettlewell the rain started to come down heavily and remained that way throughout, so it was full waterproofs on before walking up the hill and along from Hubberholme to Yockenthwaite and returning along the river. The river is normally languid, shallow and clear but after the recent rains it was a deep, dangerous, fast moving torrent that was slightly unnerving to walk alongside.

After that it was treat time and we headed to the White Lion at Cray where I had a huge (and lovely) horseshoe gammon, chips, salad, 2 eggs, tomato, mushrooms, onion rings; followed by 4 'balls' of toffee ice cream and the kids leftover puddings (chocolate fudge cake and Dutch apple crumble). Stuffed. No idea how you'd count that lot but the walk and the run should have offset the damage. Still, it really was gorgeous.

Onto a new week, and this weeks objectives are to stick to exercise plan:

Monday - Rest
Tuesday - Club tempo run
Wednesday - Rest
Thursday - VO2 max test
Friday - Weights & cardio
Saturday - LSR
Sunday - Weights & cardio

As well as maintaining some consistency in diet, sticking close to allowances each day rather than the more up and down approach I had last week.