Every day's a school day...

I'm still so new to this exercise/running thing, that I am learning each and every time I go out for a run, go to the gym, or indeed even just do some reading on the subject. I got a short sharp reminder of this last week which caused me to reflect on lessons learned.

I got home from work last Tuesday evening, it was still daylight and I was keen to get out running. It was the first time this year that I'd been able to do a daylight evening run and felt like finally spring was really on its way! So out I went, and had a terrible run. Not just bad, not "a bit harder than usual" but truly terrible. My legs felt heavy and sore, by halfway round my breathing was dreadful, wheezy and uncomfortable, on arriving home my fitbit confirmed that as I thought, my heart rate had been through the roof for most of it. I felt utterly demoralised and more than a little baffled, asking myself why, what I'd done differently, was there a physical cause - indeed the last time I'd honestly felt that bad running was before my admission to hospital last year, and I was fairly sure that my iron levels couldn't have dropped again, and certainly not that far! I passed a few days feeling sorry for myself, and also if I'm honest, very worried. I felt physically OK - maybe a little low on energy but nothing more, but my head wouldn't let up up, whispering constantly "Yes, but what if..."

Some advice I got given when I was ill was that I'd recover from the physical side of things very fast - blood transfusions do that, effectively "re-setting" your body back to a proper level - but that just because I'd bounced back fast I shouldn't forget that I HAD been seriously ill, my haemoglobin & ferritin levels were critically low on admission, and that sort of level of illness has mental effects as well as physical ones. The mental effects, I was warned, would take rather longer to recover from. This was the first time I'd encountered this though, so it wasn't until a conversation with some friends a few days later than I recalled what I'd been told, and began to think about things slightly more rationally.

By yesterday morning I felt mentally ready to have another go - I knew I had to do it at some stage, my natural stubborness wouldn't let me do otherwise, but I felt so let down by my body it took quite a lot to gird myself to get out there. However the sun was shining and having mulled over several different route options I decided just to go with a gentle confidence building short loop, starting out on the trail through the woods as I knew that would slow me down a bit to start with, and I really wanted to keep the pace easy. That turned out to be very true - the trail through the woods was far muddier than I expected and so the first few minutes were by necessity a sort of mince along, hopping from dry-ish patch to dry-ish patch in the hope of avoiding ending up on my behind! I was quite glad to get to the track and turn back onto a more stable surface. From there all went smoothly - the first half mile or so was, as ever, a degree of mind over matter as I kept telling myself that yes I was fine, yes it would get easier but then it settled down and sure enough I found myself positively enjoying it - it felt lovely to have the sun shining on me and I even started to feel a bit too warm which was a novel experience! I started to struggle as I turned up the long steady hill towards home, and part way up decided to stop before I reached the point where it was a serious struggle - could I have carried on? Probably yes, but this time I erred on the side of caution. I used the walk back to home as part of my cool down, got home, paid careful attention to stretches and then checked out my stats on Strava - and what I saw surprised me.

The run felt nice and steady - at no stage did I feel as though I was pushing it massively, or running over-fast, yet what Strava told me was that I'd run at 9.20 average pace over the 1.4 mile loop, and that in fact I'd put in my fastest ever mile, at 9.03! So this started me thinking - and I suddenly realised the problem: daft and obvious as it sounds, I'd quite simply been running too fast! I've been trying to get out of the habit of having my phone in my hand with Strava active during my runs as I've kept on reading about running "tech free" being better sometimes as it removes the pressure that we put on ourselves to be constantly striving to get a bit quicker. It makes sense - if you don't know what pace you're running at you have to learn to listen to your body and read the pace from how you feel, but for a newbie runner, without the phone in my hand to keep myself to my more standard 10 minute mile pace, my legs had overtaken my lungs. Lesson learned then - while tech-free running might be great, and liberating, and lots of other things, for a brand new runner it can also be a problem. I'm now on the search for a dedicated running watch I can use alongside my ever present fitbit in a bid to make monitoring pace easier. Having realised that, inevitably the next step was to wonder why Friday's run was so much better that the Tuesday night disaster in spite of the pace being similar - and there were some more lessons to be learned...

We'd done a Metafit class on Sunday morning - a brutal short HIIT session - and this weeks workout was seriously hard on the legs. I took Monday as a rest day, which I knew would be needed, but if anything my legs felt even more sore on Tuesday - and it was joint pain rather than muscular too. I still ran because it was daylight and I wanted to get out there, not because it truly felt like a good idea. The lesson there then - listen to your body and take an additional day of rest if things don't feel right. "Need" over-rules "want" on this, every time.

I've been neglecting the "little things" - not enough strength work, not enough sleep, diet's probably slipped back a bit, not warming up properly pre-run and not enough stretching either - and all this stuff starts to add up. My average weekly mileage has dropped over the past few weeks - not just running but walking miles too - in short I'm just moving less than I was at the start of this year. On Tuesday night I did at best a "half arsed" warmup and then set off too fast to boot - neither of which are ever likely to  make for a great run. My sleep hadn't been consistent in the days running up to it either, and my focus on the small strength building exercise sessions had dropped to almost nothing - I'd still been going to the gym, and adding in those Metafit classes, but I've done almost no short HIIT sessions of core or legs work for weeks. For my body to cope with running it needs the investment of time in the strength stuff as well - another lesson.

I've started worrying more about "where to next" on the running without taking a pause to just enjoy where I am right now - and I need to dial things back and remember that yes, people keep demanding to know when I'm going to be doing a 10k then, or what my aim is for my next 5k - but that's their expectations, not mine, and just because I answer "possibly never" to the first and "to run it" for the second that doesn't mean I'm not pushing myself, or somehow failing. This needs building from the ground up - so having discovered I can run, I now need to focus back on the small stuff and then start making small wins from there. I'd also started stressing about the RAF100 "100k 100 day" challenge that I have starting next month - and that I think has been holding me back a bit as I've been worrying more about "what if things go wrong and I can't complete it" than remembering that actually, it IS a relatively small weekly commitment (as long as I run a little over 7k each week on average, I'll complete the challenge in the time), and that I am more than capable of getting in that sort of distance.

This week then - it's "back to basics" for me - increasing footfall again generally, aiming for a consistent bedtime right through the week, making sure I spend at least some time each day stretching, and at least 5 minutes of warmup time before I run. I've already done one HIIT session and will aim to do several more through the week - I can enlist MrEH's help on this as he's a fierce taskmaster at getting me working harder than I would push myself. Similarly on stretching - he takes me through a sensible progression of stretches targeting the right areas. I'm aiming to run a couple of times and if both feel OK both physically and mentally then I might add in parkrun on Saturday at my favoured Gunpowder Park course - no pressure on that one though, I'll see how it goes as first I need to rebuild the confidence that I actually can run that distance still! Above all, I want to get back to just enjoying myself - otherwise there's no point in doing it, is there!

Robyn