Janathon 2012 Day 4: Balance

Janathon 2012 Day 4: Weights and stretches, Time - 30min, Weather - not as wild as yesterday. Mostly grey

This morning I woke up with a sudden flash of insight: I didn’t have to go outside to exercise. As insights go this is fairly low level and I was not going to leap out of my bath and run down the street yelling Eureka!  but in its own small way it was quite satisfying.

The past year had been so dominated by the thought that everyday I had to get out of the door to run, walk, or cycle, it had become a state of mind. Subconsciously I had even begun to believe the only valid form of exercise involved fresh air and travel. But this is not true - it is not even desirable.

Running, cycling, walking are an undoubted good and the basic building blocks of health and fitness but they are not everything. Their range of movements is limited and only certain muscle groups are developed. To keep the body in balance more needs to be done - strength and flexibility also need to be fostered.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to balance my fitness regime. I have a set of dumbbells and many books showing me how to stretch and plan to incorporate them into each day - not big sessions but a little regularly.

However my insight this morning was that a half hour session would fit the bill perfectly for Janathon and I would not be ridiculed and mocked as an impostor. So that is what I did

2011 Streak Day 267 (Tues Sept 27th): Maintenance

2011 Streak Day 267 (Tues Sept 27th): Walk 2 miles time 40 min, Weather - mizzly in the morning but it lifted and the afternoon  was wonderfully warm and sunny.

Maintenance is either the great joy or great pain of cycling. It has to be done to make sure everything is running well and to keep the bike looking nice but my attitude to it is extremely variable. Some days, especially when it cold and bleak, I don't want to do it. When my fingers are icy everything is fiddly and hard,. I tend to drop the tiny components and curse a lot. However on days like this I find tremendous contentment.

The sun is out, the air is warm, and I quietly and calmly take the pieces apart, clean them and put them back, adjusting tensions and checking things are running true. There is something satisfying about working with your hands and when I am in this mood it feels almost meditative.

I claim no great knowledge or skill. I just do the simple things but mostly that is all you need to do.

Cleaning the chain is probably the main bit of bicycle maintenance but I don't think cleaning features in any book of running maintenance. For running maintenance the emphasis is on tension i.e. stretching. In the past this is something I have neglected and it has built up problems. I regret I was not assiduous enough.

As part of my new beginning I have decided to take stretching more seriously and uncouple it from running (i.e. only do it after a run). I am now doing a few stretches every morning. Only for 10 minutes but the principle is, once more, that if you do something regularly you will gradually see improvements.

2011 Streak 113/365: Easy Day

2011 Streak 113/365: Walk - 2 miles, Time - 50 min, Weather - as sunny as a summer's day

Today we have a guest photographer - my niece. 

Those words probably conjure up an image of me indulging a child by giving her my camera and letting her play but that is only half true. I did give her my camera but she is not a child. She is in fact far more qualified to take photos than me as she has a degree in fine art and her final exhibition involved large photographs of tiny structures made of sugar crystal glued together with superglue.

The day is hot and we are in the garden of my sister-in-law and family in Nottingham. I am mostly reading the paper but I am also looking at my niece taking her photos. I have two main thoughts. The first is technical: noticing how she likes to use the manual setting and adjust both aperture and shutter speed - I rarely do that my tendency is to control one or the other and let the camera take care of the exposure. The second is a mixture of envy and regret. She moves about so easily - crouching, bending, and stretching with all the flexibility of youth. How I wish I could be so thoughtless about my body, knowing it would follow my intentions without any conscious effort.

My regret is at the process of ageing and how the body has to be managed - how you have to move more carefully and think about what you are doing. You can no longer take it for granted.

I know, for example, I really have to work at my flexibility. The trouble is there is a difference between knowing and doing. I have never, ever established a long lasting regime. Probably because it really does feel like work. It makes me feel uncomfortable and all the time I am confronted by my own inabilities.

It is just one of those things - if you have a bent for something you tend to enjoy it and keep going. If it is a struggle you are either very strong minded and exert your will, or you backslide. I am a backslider. There will be bursts when I tell myself I ought to do what is good for me but after a time my natural disinclination reasserts itself and the resolution dissolves.

Never mind the physical exercises its character building exercises I need.

Trying To Be Injury Free

When people talk of running goals they usually do so in terms of targets: first to run a 10k, 12 marathon, marathon, and then to run them in specific times. I have suddenly realised that, for me, these targets are incidental. For sure they focus the mind, give training a shape and a purpose, and keep you stimulated, but they are not the most important thing. The most important thing is consistency: regularly getting out, not getting distracted, keeping going. It is the basis of everything.

So if you asked me what my running goals are, I would say I have only one and that is to keep on keeping on.

Except that at this precise moment I am not running. I have an injury that has not fully healed and so I am spending my time regretting my stupidity and fretting about how long it now takes for my body to repair itself. My Immediate goal is therefore to let the injury fully heal and then establish a routine that will allow me to stay injury free. Only then will I be able to attain my real goal of consistency.

The pathetic thing is that everytime I am injured I make the same plans but everytime I still do something stupid (my only defence is that it is often a different type of stupid). I am therefore building up a list of things I have learned. Here are my top 5

1. The most vulnerable time is when you are coming back from an injury. My injuries have certainly clustered with long periods without problems interspersed with times when everything seems to go wrong.

I think there are two reasons. The first is that there is a tendency to come back too quickly, when the pain is acceptable rather than gone. The second is more speculative but is based on my experience of back pain (when the whole of the back and shoulders freeze, not just the hurt area): when we are injured other parts of our bodies compensate and we move differently. Imperceptibly we get out of balance and when we run again our gait can be effected, which can cause unusual stresses and lead to new problems.

Lesson: come back gently. The first runs should feel easy and relaxed and you should be very aware of form.

2. Doing too much is a dangerous temptation. This is obviously related to the problems of coming back from injury in a gentle way, but it can also be a problem at other times. A tendency to overestimate ones strength and/or ability is difficult to control. It is easy to make decisions based on memories of what you could do when you were at you peak or what you wished you could do. The inevitable result is a breakdown.

Lesson: be very realistic about your capabilities. It is no use thinking you ought to be able to do something, you have to be sure you can do something. For me realism can be very painful. Sometimes I cannot bear to admit to myself that I am that slow or that out of shape - but it has to be done.

3. Be careful about training on consecutive days. This article says that the number of consecutive days is the second best predictor of running injury (however it gives no supporting reference for this assertion so I don't know how reliable it is). My experience is more to do with intensity: I have had problems with back to back hard days and so I now know variety is important and the old adage of mixing hard and easy days should be followed.

Lesson: Take rest days and make sure easy days are truly easy.

4. Be careful about changing your running style. This might be a little controversial with the current fashion for throwing away cushioned trainers and running barefoot but I believe changes can only be made very carefully and very gradually and should only be done if there is a very good reason. After all our bodies have spent many years adapting to our own way of moving and building very particular strengths. Change too quickly and weaknesses can be exposed. With me it was POSE. For some reason I thought it worth a try, bought a pair of Puma H Streets (the then fashionable minimal shoe) and Hey Presto hurt my ankle.

Lesson: such things should not be done on a whim. Only change your style if you are very sure that you need to and then do so very carefully.

5. Be careful with stretching. It is undoubtably true that running does nothing for your flexibility and a regime of stretching is a good counterbalance, which can help to maintain a good range of movement. However it is not without risk. It is possible to overstretch and cause damage. I am most likely to do this if I stretch after a hard sessions (and I think this is the cause of my current injury). I have therefore come to the conclusion that stretching and running should be separate programmes.

Lesson: not all running injuries are caused by running be just as careful with other forms of training.