Cut The Shit

Harmed and Dangerous

After the pain of over extending last week - running too far too soon - I have changed my goals for winter. Instead of jumping straight to marathon distance, and thinking I could handle it as an ex runner on a comeback, I've seen sense and decided to run sensibly and build a good solid base over the next three months.

I was running three times a week and covering up to 18 miles a week. For someone beginning again I think that is pretty modest but the length of the weekly long run took up the bulk of the mileage. That is what led to my problem.

Now I am running four times in seven days but only covering half of my previous load. It's all about quality, not quantity. Today I did a three mile LSD run, with a mile / pace average of 09:23. That is a little fast for an long slow distance, so will need to slow that down. I think that's reaching tempo run pace, although it generally felt comfortable, and as the LSD pace will eventually become my steady distance pace I need to reign it in.

In non-running news, here is something else I've cut this week- its a weeping beech, and one of three in the garden of the house I lodge at. Up until two days ago, its branches were touching the lawn. I crown lifted it. I'm happy with the end result. It's quite a thing to be able to hang out under this tree in the Spring. I hope I haven't killed it.

I just did my 13.5 mile run.

The furthest I ever went in all the running I ever did was 17 miles. That was the entire Malvern Hills range followed by the run home afterwards from West Malvern to South Wu. When I got back to work in Leeds the following monday I asked if I could wear comfy trainers, due to the fifty pence blister on my heel. The 'sup said no and I limped around my patients all week in ambulance issue unbroken DM shoes.

Do I think the urge to keep going at all costs is really damaging and not what running is about? It's such a masculine mode of thought - dig in, no pain no gain, even ubiquitous American epithets like 'suck it up!', 'it'll buff out'  - that I think I should be avoiding those inner voices at all cost.

Where do these inner voices come from? Who taught me that it's better not to quit, to beat myself up because any other outcome is failure? Why is a sport like running, so subjective and personal, prone to so many damaging injuries and harmful ambitions? Is it the leakage from professional sports coverage in the modern era, into the ambitions of our class? An insidious concept that equates accomplishment with affluence, and male expressions of power, wealth and 'success' over everything at any cost?

At 11 miles I developed a pain that increased in intensity as I ran , and stopped as soon as I decided to walk, which I did for the last two miles of my long run. Self diagnosis leads me to believe its an overuse injury, and a form of tendonitis - peroneal tendonitis.

Fortunately I can slow down and change my plans. I still intend to run, as long as the pain stays away, but have decided to alter my end goal.

Down with the Patriarchy!

Takin' it easy...

Not a lot to report today. Ran an easy 10km in a slow time round the forest. It was warmer than I thought and I was overdressed.

Stay tuned for my first 13.5 mile run ever next week.

Dumfries and Galloway - the secret coast, forgotten corner of Scotland. We just spent a week there in the van with the dog.

It's a relatively small area and we only really explored from Dumfries in the east to the Galloway forest and the Rhinns - Scotlands most southerly point at East Tarbet.

The hills are gentle and the coast is peppered with beaches, cliffs, rock needles and peninsula's. The Corbett 'Merrick' is the highest hill in all of Southern Scotland and at 850 metres is more of a pleasant stroll than a chore. It gives good views of Ailsa Craig, a volcanic cap 7 miles out into the Irish sea, which we saw, rising from the horizon like a death star, the day we climbed Merrick. A chance meetings with a lunatic cyclist at the top and a cold war era Nuclear missile technician and his dog Hamish on the way down revealed all about this ominous rock.

Galloway is home also to several of the famous 7Stanes mountain bike centres. I ran on two of these this week. Firstly at Dalbeattie forest, where the running was sweet - I was there before 8am and the undulating flow of well etched, pine-softened single track beneath my Walshies was a pleasure, as was the occasional rock drop and technical boulder section. Awesome for running over and no doubt killer on a bike.

At the end of the week I did my LSD at another of the 7Stanes centres at Glen Trool. A somewhat different beast, it took me through the remnants of an ancient sessile oak wood where Robert Bruce's ragged band smashed an English army with rocks and guile, and down to a section of the Southern Upland Way.

This was hard going as I am not used to running fire roads but I managed a good 12 miler in 2 hours 20 minutes.

All this was a welcome antidote to the shameful debacle at London's Anarchist Bookfair the day before we left, which left me saddened and demoralised at the actions of an actual baying mob of fanatics. I support people who identify as Trans everywhere, and feel there needs to be a dialogue before the descent into hardened factionalism solidifies further.