March 2023 – Scribble & Scran

Running Diary (Days 100-94)

The garden is slowly but surely coming to life in among the weather mood swings. One minute there are moments of brightness, warmth and the feeling of renewal. The next teeth chattering cold that cuts through to the bone. Then we’ve had rain and howling wind as the warmth battles it out against the cold.

Last week I dropped that I’d signed up for the #mens10k in Glasgow. A little bit of craziness in my 50th year and an attempt at trying to keep some level of fitness on what now feels like a road to retirement. I’m keen not to throw in the towel despite lower back pain, hip and knee niggles.

The muscles pain from the 5k run that I took part in had finally worn off and so as is usual when I start something new and signed up, I’m really motivated. I was keen to get going with the training plan, albeit I’m a little bit early for the plan that got shared with me at my level.

I don’t know what possessed me, perhaps the cold air, the feeling of being cooped up in house for a few days and keen to swing back into action. The frustration around the lack of movement for a week as I recovered. So I decided for my first session I’d tackle the local hill!! On the plan, hill sprints get mentioned around week 6! What was I thinking? The worst that could happen is that I walk up, and the best, that I discover that it’s easy!! I knew one thing though, I wasn’t going to do hill sprints! Just a case of wanting to see where I’m at now, and where I’ll be in 6 weeks when I do start.….what sounds like pain! So training for the training 🙂

The other thing that I didn’t say, was that I volunteered to be an ambassador for the run. Which essentially makes me duty bound to train and write about it. The run really has an ethos around men’s health both physical and mental. As someone who sits at a desk all day, dealing with a multitude of ups and downs as a guy in technology I felt I had something to bring to the story. This run is really for everyone and I’m excited to be taking part and the journey it’s going to take me on.

Like appearing on camera and putting up a YouTube video. Let’s call it a raw short that is in no danger of being recognised at the Oscars any time soon 🙂

Day 100, start as I mean to go on

Training plan this week which I did stick to.

Day	Activity	Reality
Monday	Rest	Rested – rained
Tuesday	Run Easy – 20 mins	Ran Easy for 20 mins, and cycled to work – a cold day
Wednesday	Rest	Another cold day, and raining, walked
Thursday	Run Easy – 25 mins	It rained, but I got on with it, even inspired the boss
Friday	Rest	Rested

and the plan for next 7 days

Day	Activity	Reality
Saturday	Rest
Sunday	Run Easy – 30 mins
Monday	Rest
Tuesday	Run Easy – 20 mins
Wednesday	Rest
Thursday	Run Easy – 25 mins
Friday	Rest

Hopefully I can stick to the plan, and thanks for reading.

The #WeekendCoffeeShare is an informal weekly link-up hosted by Natalie the Explorer that serves as weekly heart beat and sort of of a mind-dump. Helps me reflect on my week, with a list of achievements, thoughts and rambles normally whilst drinking a beverage probably listening to music.

Meadows 5k Edinburgh

Meadows Route — Meadows Marathon Route – 5K – twice round

It’s been a week of aches and pains on waking this week, a struggle to get going. The cold in the air returned with the expectation that it might have snowed, on opening the curtains each day granted with relief. The aches and pains are from the run I took part in at the weekend.

For a minute I want to bask in the outcome so we are rolling back to last Sunday. The day felt stretched out, a way of managing the crowed I suppose with 4 events. A Full-on marathon, a 10k, a Half and a 5k. With a 2.30 start time for the 5k, I’d got a bit of a food issue and not prepared for running in the afternoon. I normally go straight after that first coffee of the day.

So, whilst my wife was running in the 10k. I got myself a toastie, between one of her laps. Hoping, that 3.5 hours would be enough to digest the little beast. My wife flew round the morning route, and we were home for 12:30. So I put the time in, trying to stay in the right mindset before cycling back for the 2.30 warm up and 2.45 starter gun.

As I got myself in position for the start and turned around, I was definitely the oldest by a long way. I got that sinking feeling that people might have just rocked up today after a night on the town, saying, ‘I know why don’t we do the 5k this weekend?’. I might have done that in my twenties, but here now in my fifties and a good twenty-five years of sitting behind my desk. I’d had to put some effort in on the streets.

With my earphones in, and attempted lip reading of the race directors’ instructions, I hear the count down as the gathered crowd counts down from five. I shoot down the cobbled street like a cannon out of a gun. I think I was overtaken straight away, a couple of folks held back. Then as we turned onto middle meadow walk, it got busy. We hit the half marathoners still in flow, a little congestion that got frustrating. Folk running two abreast. A speed burst from me saw me punch a hole in space time (not quite) releasing a bunch of angst. Turned the corner onto the flat and what would be the main circuit. There’s a coffee hut come mobile café made from what looks like an old air stream. The smell of bacon hits me as it drifts on the cold air. Stitch kicks in and my lungs are going ten to the dozen, I think I’m going too fast, but I’m keen to keep up with Mr casual, his hoodie tied round his waste like this is a jolly jaunt, a breeze for someone a good thirty years younger than me. I started to think what am I doing, and why, what is this for, as the pain of the cold restricts my breathing.

Still, I focus on the runners in front, start picking my targets. If I can keep up with that guy I’m doing ok. That lady looks like she is doing well, can I keep pace with her. If I can just make that lamp post. Is that a massage station? Definitely worth stopping for that. Can I really do two laps of this? I remembered a water stand on the map and if I can just make it there I’ll be able to keep living. Then I remember I never drink water in my training why would I need it now. I needed some relief, to breathe, and take a sip. It’s not actually possible to drink water whilst running I find!

What I didn’t realise, even though my watch was telling me, was that I was putting a good pace on and that I was really pushing it (for me). The tunes in my head, folk to real in, folk over taking me, it all added up and messed with that promise I’d made to myself, the fact I was just in this to take part and get round.

The hill in the middle, marking the halfway point at the top (and the end), ugghh, I’ve got go round again. I decided I’d take a breather at the base, a little walking, some breathing. The guy I’d just overtook, had to overtake me (Sorry for getting in the way!) The tune changed about halfway, motivation, strength, I could see the sign to turn and started again. I was halfway, the bacon van again, the tennis courts. Then my favourite part a guy with his son on his shoulders. Leaning in so he could high five racers as they pass by. Made that moment so less painful and a reminder that this was supposed to be fun.

There is more pain, more grunting, and that hill to the finish. I tuck in behind someone who’s got a brit of grit, youth and it helps. Like the peloton on the tour de France. She sees someone in the crowd who offers an energy drink, a grandparent maybe and I lose my crutch…but, it’s fine, it’s got me up that hill and I make it to the final turn. I had my sons’ words in my head about tanking it on the final 800m, give it all you’ve got. There isn’t anything in the tank or I would have. There is relief, the finish.

The result text come’s through almost immediately. My watch chirps away with all kinds of news. I just need to sit down!

I later find that I came 14th overall out of 46 and 1st out of the V50 category. I don’t know how to take this, one the fact I’ve entered a category called veterans and two there were only three. At the same time, I clock that there was a person in the V60. Mentally I think I still need to be running in another ten years…. and I can be that person.

I sign up for the Mens10k in Glasgow. I like the symmetry of a 100 day count down and sixteen weeks to go.

Drenched

Opened the blinds this morning to see it was chucking down, decided I had to go anyway. The final not very well planned training session before the 5k run at the Meadows that I’m taking part in. The boss convinced me to sign up in November and it’s done its job of keeping me semi motivated through the winter months.

Started with a steady slow stride. Just round the corner there is a major junction, lots of traffic lights and at 7 in the morning lots of folk in a rush. Edinburgh, I believe is in the running for the pot hole capital of Europe. Within a very few short minutes of starting I find myself drenched in icy muddy water as a tidal wave cascaded onto the paving. A morning commuter hits one of those competing potholes full of water as they decided they needed to be the first out the lights.

I curse and carry on at a slow pace, clocking up the strides, cold and dreich, not nice, and then the positive side of it, that the exercise is in the bag for the day!

I thought I’d flash back to what was on the menu last Saturday in the hope it might give you inspiration, and for me a reminder.

Blood Oranges are in season and I’d been sitting on a Rhubarb cake recipe from the Kew Gardens cookbook. A curd is made from the oranges and then combined as a layer in the construction of the cake. Rhubarb in first, use the upside-down cake kind of technique. When it went in the oven I was sure we were in disaster territory. I’d used too much sponge on the first layer and it was more like a bunch of dumplings sitting on a lake of custard in a sponge tin. Wow, should have had more faith in the recipe and myself. I’m minded I need to write a few notes on the recipe. The curd simple to make like a fresh custard and not to worry about the blood orange season which only seems to last two weeks. I adjusted the flour to be a little more wholemeal, a little less sugar and that worked.

Main, was a fillet of salmon in order to convince the boy it wasn’t a vegetarian meal being served, when really it was. The fish played the side role to Butter Bean Stew, Kale and Sticky Blood Oranges. Taken from The Modern Cook’s Year by Anna Jones. The butter beans, definitely a keeper, the hazelnut and sesame seed topping a keeper. The sticky oranges, a bit of a faff. All in the interests of learning.

I started the plumbing job that I’ve been shirking for months, opening up the paneling, to find a bath was in the way! A little bit obvious, but none the less very frustrating! I freed one tap off within a couple of minutes. Then an hour of lying on my back, a bike torch in one hand wrench in the other. I had to give up. I just couldn’t get in, couldn’t get an angle and zero torque when I might have got an alignment. So, in true DIY style we have a half finished job!

I’ve had one delivery of an 8 in 1 tool that promised all manner of success, to find it was just shy of the fitting and I await the postman on the next delivery of another wrench. I’m not giving up yet. I’m nervous though, dismantling is usually the easy part!