*The Debatewise Blog
What running has taught me - part 5
Last week I said I wanted to be more like my dog. This week my wish came true. Only it wasn’t that the ladies found me more strokable (I’ll probably never have ears as soft), or even that I managed to take the running in my stride. The opposite in fact, we both developed a limp.His seems to have been cured by a couple of days not running, mine may need a bit more work. I tried his medicine, skipped two runs and had what amounted to three days off. This helped, I soon missed running and used the morning walks on the sunshine-bathed Heath to get my head around work problems.
Even so, my knee still hurt and I decided to see a physio. Luckily for me the person I was allocated turns out to be an athlete who has represented Jamaica in the long and triple jump in the last three Olympics. Well I say luckily, I think her pain threshold is perhaps a notch or two above mine and I spent most of the half hour trying not to wince too visibly as she pummelled and pounded away.
There were other good and bad points too. Can’t tell you how good it was to hear her say she’d admired me for running a marathon. That’s an Olympian, admiring me. However, she wasn’t so complimentary about my cool down routine and told me, very strictly, that I needed to have a cold bath after the long Sunday run.
Of course before I could experience that joy I had to actually run. Not something I was looking forward to given my last big outings and the whole pain thing. To get round I decided I’d use the heart rate bit of my heart rate monitor and stop being so obsessed with my minute per mile pace.
One of the things that has taken the joy from running, and caused the injury too I bet, has been the constant focus on time. I’ve gone from just wanting to finish to wanting to finish in under 4:30, then under 4 hours and lately it’s even crept to around 3:45. Give me another month and I’d be angling for a place with the elites.
Or not. I decided it would be better all round to download a different schedule, set my maximum heart rate and then run to 76% of it. Whole different story. I don’t have to run up hills as fast as down and can be more sympathetic to fluctuations in my natural rhythm. Which I do have, despite any evidence to the contrary.
I started this yesterday and whilst my knee hurt from the very first step and stayed that way for just about every step thereafter, I did feel a lot less tired and managed to complete the 19 miles, yes 19 miles, in a decent enough time. 3:20 if you’re interested.