The Great South Limp 2012

This was the run that was meant to be my target ‘race’ between starting to run in June and the 28th of October 2012 and my first race since I was at school. The race is over 10miles of the Portsmouth/Southsea coast and is the only 10mile run in the world to be classed as an IAAF Gold Label event with an estimated 25,000 runners. Quite the event!

My preparation for this was to literally get out and run, when I felt like I wanted to. I had no plan, no guide, no real experience and would just go out and run. I was running mostly in my Vibram Fivefinger Bikilas (weird toe-shoes for those that don’t know, I’ll expand on them in another post at some point) that I got in America and really enjoyed the ‘feel’ of being connected to the ground in a minimal cushioned running shoe. Being able to feel every lump and bump of the ground made me far more aware of every step I took and the experience made me want to run more. A good start.

I quickly worked my way up to doing a nice 3 mile loop of the area I live in, entirely on the pavements. I’d sometimes mix it up with an alternative 3 mile loop in the other direction (the two together would form a nice figure 8 once I was ready to go up to 6 miles) that went out on country roads for the first half and pavements again for the second part. The pace I was going at wasn’t particularly fast (9min miles) but I found myself wanting to run faster and increase distance at the same time. My ‘building up’ to 3 miles went – 0.59 miles – > 0.94 miles -> 3 miles. I’d read that you’re meant to only increase your mileage 10% a week, but felt because I’d run in the past, even if it was a couple of decades ago, I’d be able to do it quicker. Mistake! I ran 11 times in June, for a total of 26 miles, but realised that two things didn’t feel right.

• Pain on the base of my left foot just behind my 2nd and 3rd toes starting at around 1.5 miles
• Really tight calves. Particularly the right calf, which felt like it was cramping up around 2 miles into a run.

I’ve since realised that the pain behind the toes was due to the toe-shoes being too tight. They fit like a second skin, really comfortable to walk around in and at the start of a run. What I hadn’t account for in the sizing was that my feet would swell up when running, making them too tight on my left foot (which is half a size bigger than my right already), particularly behind my 2nd toe, which is longer than my big toe so was reaching the end of the toe-box, causing the pain in the soft tissue at the base of the toe. To combat this, I changed shoes and ran in my Merrell Barefoot Trail Gloves, which, as the name suggests, are designed for off road running, but make for a very good comfortable minimalist road shoe with plenty of toe space!

The calf pain on the other hand, would not go away. It was the same level of pain in both calves at first and I put it down to learning to run on my mid-foot rather than landing on my heel, which is necessary in less cushioned shoes but caused more load on the calf which in turn causes them to feel tired. However, after a month, the pain in the left had gone, but the right was getting more and more sore, causing me to be unable to run at all after about a mile of running. I tried resting it, and only ran twice in July and 4 times in August. September came, and the pain hadn’t gone away but I realised that I really needed to be able to finish 10 miles in October as I had raised over £500 for charity by this point. So I tried to run through the pain, some days were better than others and I was able to get up to a painful 5 miles as the furthest distance I’d run.

The Sunday before the race, I went out for an intended 6 mile run, got 2 miles into it and had to give up and walk home. I could barely put any weight on my leg at all. Monday morning, the pain was still there, it had never really lasted after I stopped running for longer than 30mins, being in pain 24hrs later was entirely new. Tuesday I went to the local Doctors and saw a Nurse Practitioner who told me it was Achilles Tendonitis and strongly advised me not to run the 10 miles. When I asked if I could walk it because I’d raised over £800 for charity that I didn’t want to refund, he said he wouldn’t recommend it but understood if tried, but advised me to stop if it started hurting on the day.

The big day came, and I made my way over to Portsmouth with my hugely supportive (and concerned) wife, and my brother-in-law who had not only come from London to support me, but had brought his P.E. kit in case he needed to sub in and run the race for me! I’m very lucky to have family like that. I made my way to the start line, and felt pretty good. On the Thursday before the race I’d been out for a slow jog and realised if I kept my pace really slow, and my stride length much shorter, it didn’t hurt as much and I managed 3 miles at 12mins/mile pace. So I figured I’d run as far as I could before stopping and walking the rest of the 10 miles.I set out running, forgetting all about the planned 1hr30min target time I’d thought I could hit back when I started running, 9 minute miles were not an option at this point. I’d re-adjusted with the idea of being over the moon at being able to limp across the line in under 2hrs. Somehow, I kept running, despite having to stop twice to adjust shoe laces (was originally too tight, then when I loosened them, it came undone).

The key moment of the run came at the 6 mile point, a man with a fridge on his back overtook me and was suddenly 20yards ahead of me. I didn’t have my headphones in so had no idea what time I was on course for or what pace I was running, but I did know I didn’t want a guy with a fridge on his back to cross the line ahead of me. So I tried to go a little faster, whilst monitoring my right calf. I reeled the fridge-guy in with 2 miles to go and kept going to the finish line.Somehow, I’d made it, running the entire way, having only done a maximum of a 5 mile run in training, I’d run the whole way round with a dodgy, and seriously painful, achilles tendon (ibuprofen helped with that as much as adrenaline I think!) and wearing my trail running shoes, which time would show were way too small as well (part of the learning curve!). My finish time was just over 1hr42mins, I’d managed roughly 10mins per mile almost the whole way round. Each of my last 6 miles was progressively faster and I limp/ran the last mile in just over 9mins. My finish place of 11154 somehow put me in the top half of finishers.

So that was it. The run I’d planned was done, I was quite seriously injured (after the run I couldn’t walk without a limp for nearly 3 weeks) and needed physiotherapy for a couple of months, but I’d got the running bug and wanted to keep at it. Something about it felt good and natural, and when my friend Gary asked if I’d run the Brighton Marathon with him in April 2013 for his friend’s charity, I agreed with the proviso that I wouldn’t risk my health or my calf (I’d been advised by a Doctor by now that it was Achilles Tendinopathy and could be 6-8months before it was back to normal). So I had my next target to aim for…

Why I run

This is the short version!

June 2012, whilst at on a weekend away with my wife, Becca. I felt challenged to be more active and get out and ‘do something good’. Life had been too sedate, and despite being relatively healthy and sporty, I’d not really done any sustained continuous physical activity since leaving university where I had played football 2/3 times a week. I realised that even when I did that, it wasn’t the best physical shape I’d been in. I had to go back nearly 20 years to when I did cross country running at school in my early teens and was running 3/4 times a week and doing competitive races at the weekend that I found the period of life in which I was my most healthy.

In fact, looking back at that period, I was actually quite good at cross country and longer distance running, being in the top 10 of my age bracket in the large and competitive county of Yorkshire. I even ran in the English schools championship finals (the pinnacle of school cross country) a year under-age and finished in the top half of runners despite having an asthma attack half way round (incidentally, the only asthma attack I’ve ever had!). Yet when we moved home from Yorkshire to Worcestershire I took the chance to get away from running and spent more time on sedate sports, like cricket!

So for the above reasons, the idea of running to get fit and healthy really got stuck in my head and I couldn’t even wait to get home before parting with £40 to enter myself for the Great South Run in Portsmouth in October via my phone. I knew that I needed something to aim for otherwise I’d go out for a few runs, get bored and give up. I also knew that even with the event being months away and having plenty of time to prepare I wanted some accountability and wanted the run to achieve something more than just getting me fit. So I decided to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity as they had done so much to help the daughter of some very good friends of ours.

I’d well and truly thrown the gauntlet down. To myself. I had to do it.

Me on holiday in 2012

The weekend away also came soon after we’d returned from two and a half weeks visiting friends and family in the USA. We ate out a LOT, and American portions tend to be larger than British. We also wanted to experience as many culinary delights (and non-delights) as we could whilst over there, including American super-sweet potatoes, cheese fondues, corndogs, steak, cheesecake and much much more. I came back from that trip weighting 93.7kg (4lbs short of 15 stone. Since then I’ve managed to get down to 82kg, which is under 13 stone). I knew I had to do something about the weight before it got really unhealthy. In fact, whilst in the states Becca and I ordered a Cross Trainer/Cycling machine to arrive just after we got back so that we could keep fit and lose weight.

Whilst in the USA, I stumbled upon a ‘new’ type of trainer called Vibram Fivefingers and a book called “Born to Run“, both of which got me thinking that just going out and pounding the pavements in ‘traditional’ running shoes was something that people assumed was good for you. Reading the book (with more than a few pinches of salt) made me realise that there’s more to running than just going out and doing it, although in it’s simplest terms there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I needed to get my head round the fact that if I was to hit my target of completing 10 miles in the Great South Run, I’d need to do so in a way that worked for me.

The more I read and researched about running, the more I realised those 10miles was just going to be the start. I’m now training for the Brighton Marathon for the second time in April with a 100km Ultramarathon scheduled for July.

This blog is hopefully to keep a track of that, share some of the cool things I’ve found out about running, and give me some of that ‘accountability’ I like and need. I will also share some of the stuff I’ve already done, including the training (and injury) of the Great South Run.