And miles from where you are,

I lay down on the cold ground, I pray that something picks me up, and sets me down in your warm arms....

It would have been my nans birthday today. There was a time when I was a lot younger than I am now that I knew if everything went wrong I could run to the phone box over the road and do the reverse charges thing and she would tell me what to do. (She lived in london we lived in Devon) And I had to, more than once. I can only imagine how distressing it must have been to have an incoherent child ring you in the middle of the night, but she always told me what to do, or indeed did it for me, and just the sound of her voice was always enough to make me believe that we would be ok.

I was thinking about her today, as is only right. Just how lucky I was to have her and pleased that the sun was shining for her. Whitsun is always her holiday :)

Anyway, this week? 

Work, good yeah, spent some time on an assay that seems to be going well. Need to do a bit more on it this week. If you are a boxer or someone who repeatedly concusses themselves I would quite like some of your CSF. I'm sure I will get hold of something suitable :-D (I'll be in trouble now if Mr H turns up in a & e with head injuries won't I!) but I will make them get a sample.

Running....yeah good too. Did a 3k training session on Tuesday. Basically 400m intervals. It hurt. It's supposed to.

Wednesday, 1st ELVIS race. 5k over eastbrookend country park. A 3 lap trail run. I felt good, it went well. 21.47 and more importantly beating rivals.

Friday, bootcamp in freezing rain. Nice.

Saturday, parkrun. Felt quite flat and tired and J wasn't there. 21.50. Ok.

Sunday, hmp run. 2k wu, 10k 46.54 2k wd.

Today Hatfield Broad Oak 10k. What a lovely race! Felt like everyone in the village was there supporting, a real festival feel. And nearly 1300 runners.

I put myself on the 45 min line and basically went for it. It wasn't flat but no real hills, just up bits. It was hot though, but hey I like hot. I passed a couple of rivals early on and just kept working hard to keep them off. I have my watch on kilometres now so I was clocking them but not really understanding :-D I just knew if I kept the Ks below 4.30 I would PB.

I ended up with 4.26 avg and a nice PB of 44.31. Happy days!

Then a pub lunch with friends who I travelled with. Lovely bank holiday :)

Next ELVIS on Saturday :)))))

I'm so tired I can hardly think, so I'll feel instead,

And let you loose inside my head.....

Oooh. Scary :-D

Heads is very relevant. I spent Monday at a conference listening to really interesting talks about the role of inflammation in Alzheimer's. it's always been there and there have always been argument s about whether it is cause or consequence. Well obviously it's never that simple, but it is proving a very interesting area of research at the moment and I'm involved in some projects looking at just that.

I think one of the most interesting, and worrying things is that events occur so many years before onset of disease. Prevention is where you have to come at it from but well that ain't easy.

Anyway *shakes self* that's enough of that. I was off for the rest of the week. Well nearly all of it. I think I pottered really. In the gym, at home, just stuff. Was nice. I do like my own company and sometimes it's just nice to be quiet.

Thursday I went into town and met my Swedish boss for coffee and a meeting, then went to Hyde Park for a bootcamp. Was great but quite a hard one. I walked back to Tottenham Court Road down Oxford Street.......which gave me enough people contact to last the rest of the week! I got in and faffed about until the club handicap 5k which was held on Barking parkrun course. I've never done one before but it was fun, if hard work. I find it harder to push myself when I'm running sort of alone, but on the other hand you are chasing people so you do have a target. I was happy to finish in 21.31. There are 7 races in the series and I think they will be excellent for training.

I had run there and intended to run home but as I ran out of the park any energy I had left me and I just couldn't run. I had to walk home literally hanging on as I felt really shaky and sick. As I came up the stairs I was shouting for something, anything sweet to eat and Mr H saved my life with some ginger biscuits! Was weird but I guess a hard bootcamp and then a hard 5k was enough to make me bonk :-D

Friday I didn't feel all that good and although I intended to do some work I ended up sleeping most of the day. Maybe I was fighting something off? Don't know. I'm back taking iron whenever I remember now, quite paranoid about it I guess. I have reason to believe I need it.

Saturday is obv parkrun day. I felt ok but wasn't particularly going for anything apart from giving J a race. And I bloody did too! I love that running on each others shoulder thing, it really motivates you and during the last 6 weeks or so I have got to know her a little (she is really shy, and a lot younger than me) and we can laugh at things round the course, like the little old Asian man who walks round the lake with his headphones in singing something or other at the top of his voice :-D 

Anyway, the times were J 21.19 A 21.21. So I PBd and I am not at all unhappy with that.

Then we went and bought a vacuum cleaner. I bet you don't normally read that in blogs do you! I nearly got a dyson ball which costs as much as a house, but then we realised that the tesco voucher thingy doesn't do household electricals this time. Bum!!!! I was soooo excited.

It does however do BBQ equipment so we could get £400 worth of that. How fucking useful would that be, we don't have a fucking garden! I think also we could do baby stuff. Likewise. Huff.

Today was Great Baddow 10. A decent race that I have done 2 times since 2005 with a best of 1.23 or so. I won't lie. I was scared. DNFing last week upset me. Doing it again would be a disaster.

I got a lift down with club mates and that was quite pleasant, all nice people I get on with (that can be important, you want to get to a race relaxed, not having had your head talked off by someone with verbal diarrea, that has happened to me and when I turned on said person and snapped, well, they still talk about that :-D

Proper loos in the portaloos! They were ace and with girly soap and moisturiser too.....how cool is that! I moisturised my arms just cos I could!

Anyway, the race. I can't really tell you much because I ran naked. Yes you heard me, no watch. Call the press! I needed to know I wasn't going to mentally turn on myself if I looked at a mile split and was unhappy. So I ran as I felt. At 5 miles a guy was calling out times. 37.17. Okdk. That sounds alright I thought, keep at it. And I did.

At 8 I heard some familiar heavy breathing behind me. It was my club mate Vicky. Now I maintain, over short stuff I have her, but anything over 10k she is better, even though I have a better half than her. I stopped or slowed for water, she didn't I knew she wouldn't but I needed it, so she overtook me. Fair dos I thought I'm still doing ok, just keep pushing.

I did and I may or may not have just sneaked under 1.16. I don't know because I'm not on the results :( typical isn't it when I didn't wear my watch! But I'm trying to sort it.

I'm now Knackered again, and looking forward to 5k on weds night, the first in the Elvis series. I intend to hammer it!

You can't play on broken strings, you can't feel anything...

That your heart don't want to feel, I can't tell you something that ain't real......

So I can't tell you I was looking forward to today.

I wasn't. I wanted it done, I wanted it over, I wanted to be able to do the things I wanted to do.

So why, why on earth did you enter????

Lets go back to quadzilla shall we. Feb 2012, 4 marathons in 4 days that nearly broke me. I hated a lot of it for lots of reasons. After it I cancelled all my long stuff.

After a think, I decided I did want to do another mara, but properly so I went to see Russ. Russ sorted me out a plan and initially I was targeting JW Ultra. But nothing was going right, 10 minute miles were killing me, stairs would give me palpitations and a 3 mile run needed recovery days.

Aha! I finally thought when anaemia was diagnosed, thank fuck for that. I haven't got really shit, there is something wrong. So I took the tablets and thought about my diet more and from July to October saw my times improve amazingly for short stuff. Meanwhile I opted for the relay at JW and had a blast, well sort of, THAT was blogged about.

So back on track here and I decided I would target a spring mara (though I do think the name should be changed to 'supposedtobespringbutactuallymorefuckingfreezingthanthewinter' mara. And entered Brighton. I don't think I trained well over winter, but I trained and got PBs at everything up to 20 miles. I was happy, but decided to pull out of Brighton. There were reasons for this, but I now can't help feeling that I just didn't want to do a mara? Even I don't know what it thinking most of the time.

But I entered Halstead instead. A month later. Maybe I will get to run in some warm weather in training? Erm, not so much really, but there you go.

I still don't think I'm training that well. I'm loving the short fast interval type stuff, hating everything else. But well I just carried on. Thinking if I can just maintain until the day I will be fine.

And here's the thing, over the last month or so I have actually started to enjoy the longer stuff again. I think I know why. It's because I am getting stronger so I can run longer with less effort, but it was too late, I can now regularly run 5k at sub 7s. No specific training just doing it, I believe this translates up but only slowly and I will run quicker at longer distances......with time.

So today, I will be honest, the start line tingles and nerves weren't there. I felt empty. I started well enough, first 5 between 7.15 and 7.40s. But, my foot hurt on the sole. I only decided to wear flats 2 weeks ago, as my Kinvaras were giving me arch issues. Maybe they were too flat? Anyway I was still ok, but must have started to run different because my calf started to hurt. 

I was still doing ok, but by about 10 was having a new pain in my groin. Nice! I will be honest that worried me more than the other things because it was shooting pain and I had no idea what it was.

I will assume it was connected to the other two things though. Mile 13 came in at 9.10. I knew I was slowing but it really really upset me. I stopped to walk out my calf and it was really here that my race ended. (Third fastest half ever :-d) I knew I couldn't carry on like this. Nonetheless I ran the next 2 miles before my head just said no. Stop now. You are going to hurt yourself and for what? 

So I walked to a Marshall who took me to Mr H.

Race over.

Am I disappointed? Yes. Am I disappointed that I took the decision to stop when I knew I wouldn't acheive my goal? No not really. Shit happens. I've run 63 marathons. I don't need to run anymore if I don't want to.

I have received some lovely texts and tweets so thank you. I have spoken to my best running buddy, who assures me I will be awesome in future.

He's not wrong ;-)

I am now going to concentrate on the ELVIS series and the club handicap and Grand Prix. I also feel very priveliged to have been asked by someone very special to me to help him work towards running a 5k all the way. (Prob cos he thinks I will manage that without DNFing).

My legs are trashed and my calf feels like someone kicked me in it.

I know I did the right thing.

And I'm going to keep seeing Russ who is going to help me get a PROPER 5k time :)))

We were walking, walking in two worlds,

In the garden, of sunlight home, bad children on the phone.....

The first time I heard those lyrics I did a mental double take. I knew where Ash had got that from. They got it from my 14/15 year old life.

You know I love to read yeah. But not so much as I did then. I read that book so many times, in fact I read it every couple of years but I'll never read it like I did the first time when it was a proper escape. When I read it now I remember that me and how overwhelmed with grief and guilt I was and I think thank you books, for taking me away. Thank you dad and teachers for giving me the enthusiasm and thirst for reading I have always had.

I can't imagine not having that and wonder what I'd be without it. Empty? Really good at computer games? Awesome at running :-D

*shakes self* sorry! Bit of musing there, prob cos my last few runs have been with a playlist that includes that song.

Yeah running. Been good actually. Was pleased to hit hmp on Tuesdays run when I needed to and do better than mp on both subsequent runs *high five* I guess I'm as ready as I will ever be given my inherent inability to do what I'm told :-D

Friday I had to do a talk at work, it was ok but I felt bloody awful, but that's what happens isn't it, and I still felt rough at parkrun Saturday. I won't go into details but I was very upset that the loos were locked :( .......

.......and then went and ran 21.32 with my young rival only beating me by 3 seconds. Could I have run that much quicker? Maybe, but I've got my eye on next week. 5 Ks are not important right now.

Still it is a massive confidence boost to know I can do 5ks under 22 even when I don't feel great and think that when I do prepare properly I will fucking fly :-D

And and and, someone I know has been practising run walking 5k. I am very excited about this because I owe some back. Boy do I ever :)))))

And last, but not least, I mentioned reading earlier, when I was very young, Brer Rabbit was one of my fave books!!!!! (Did it, did it!)

I will see you on the other side. Hopefully.