Stupid feet!

Hello again everybody, thanks for coming back to read about my little run I'm going on.

Well I've managed to get myself a physiotherapy appointment. My amazingly flat feet have been walking and running on some custom built carbon-fibre orthotic insoles for a few years now but they are WELL past their best and my feet have been suffering for months now.

I'm looking forward to having plaster casts made of my plates of meat again. It's quite a weird sensation having it all glooped around your whole foot before drying and setting.

Then it has to be cut off with a chainsaw!

Well a Dremmel is a type of saw isn't it?

It'll be well after the Royal Parks Half-Marathon I'm running for The Stroke Association in October but will mean I can start enjoying going out in the crisp winter mornings that are soon going to be upon us.
 
Can't wait really.

In the mean time just increasing the mileage. Got a couple of weeks of build up before I'm taking my girlfriend out for a full 13 miles then we'll wind down in time for race day. It'll be hard work but that's the idea really.

Thanks to everyone who has donated and pledged so far please keep sending your money as it ALL makes a difference.

One of the findings which was funded by The Stroke Association was that Quick treatment following TIA or minor stroke could reduce the risk of a major stroke by 80 per cent.

This is fantastic news as it means people, like my mum, have massively increased recovery prospects.

Keep it up folks :)

Every pound makes a difference.

Only six weeks till the race itself now. Not that I'll be doing any racing as such just trying to cross the finish line without collapsing would be great.

It's the first day back at work after our summer holidays so I've been getting a few more donations and pledges. Thank you very much to everyone who's given so far.

In 2009/10 The Stroke Association spent over £2.5 million on research as well as supporting training for specialist doctors, nurses and therapists.

Every pound makes a difference so please continue to support charities close to your heart.

Lazy bones.

Hi everybody.
I have a confession to make. It's been over a week since I last went out for a run and I've had all the time in the world to do so. In my defence I've been nursing aching feet since dancing the night away at a ceilidh last weekend. Lots of food, lots of local cider and then lots of jumping about in kilts to some Scottish country music. It's a wonder no-one was sick. Actually someone was but it was the following morning so they can be forgiven. We all camped out in a field so the vomit was clearly visible once the sun had risen. Otherwise much merriment was had by all parties, myself included. I rarely dance anywhere, not since my younger days (loved up raver!) but the combination of live folk music, strong booze and my getting to wear a kilt made it all the more enjoyable.

I was supposed to be camping this weekend as well but apparently you need to book well in advance for weekend breaks in August. Who knew! With heavy heart I reluctantly booked my girlfriend and me into a hotel with a pool and sauna. To think we could have been enjoying the great outdoors and beans-on-toast for breakfast. Maybe another time. She's making us go out for a run before we go though so perhaps I should go out this afternoon as well to get my knees back into the swing of things. Just a short session mind you, it's baking hot outside. We had 30 degrees Celsius yesterday (86 degrees Fahrenheit) and it's still quite warm today.

After the seven+ miler I ran last week I reckon I can get up to ten miles by the end of August no problem. But for now I'll settle for a little 5-miler to keep me on my toes. Which means I'm going to have to say goodbye for now.

Thank you very much to everyone who has donated so far.
Talk to you later :D
 

Being on holiday is Super Sweet.

Well hello to all you lovely people. This weather is just fantastic right now, I'm really getting that summer-vibe now. Please, please, please let it last for the next couple of weeks.
After that I'm back in work and (sorry to all of you who may be going on your holiday then) I don't care if it starts raining again and being generally rubbish.

One of the downsides to this good climate is having to put off your physical pursuits till the sun has started going down. It's too hot during the day and I'm not getting up early on a weekend.

No way.

Then if you've been hanging out in a beer garden it's nigh on impossible to get up the motivation to go home and get changed and start your long run. I didn't get out till eight on Sunday evening but it was worth it. I watched the sunset and took things steady for ninety minutes. There's no point in trying to break yourself on the longer runs. Save those Hellish sessions for the sprint days!

I had my first on-line donation the other day, I was quite excited I can tell you. I have a little over two months to reach my target but I know my colleagues will be easily cajoled into donating some of their hard-earned for such a good cause. Especially if I time my asking of them for pay-day. Tactics :)

Seriously though, thank you to everyone who has donated so far, it means a lot to me given the year my mums had.

She recently collapsed due to low blood pressure because the levels of her medication still aren't quite right. Not a typical stroke scenario and certainly not as dangerous though she could easily have been injured if she fell.

The doctors took her off the strongest tablets she was on and she seems as feisty as ever though you can never predict when these situations will occur. Incidentally my mum has certain food intolerances and the blood pressure tablets are coated in lactose so they were off the cards immediately. However the cost of getting lactose-free medication is extortionate!

Thank you NHS, many slate you and you're hard to convince when we need something (which'll cost you an arm and a leg!), but mum says you're OK.

Now I'm under orders to have dinner ready on time tonight so I have to go shopping before everyone else thinks the same thing. And it's such a lush day :(

See you soon.

Oh yeah before I forget, I have a web page with Just Giving, if you click the link below you can check out their site as well as my page. I've put links to The Stroke Association on there as well as back to here (in case you get lost on the way).
Please let me know if there's a problem with any of the links and I can check them out.

The sound of music.

Some of you may notice that the title of this entry is very much like the name of a well known musical. However I am NOT making a reference to said musical hence the lack of capital letters.
Not that I'm against it or anything it's just not my cup of tea.
Although all those hills would make for an excellent morning jog.
And if there were, perhaps, some people playing music then I could listen whilst I ran up the aforementioned hills.

I find listening to music when I'm out running or cycling takes my mind off the task at hand and somehow makes it easier. All of a sudden I'm focusing on my pace and getting it in time with the music. Getting into a good old groove. Before too long I'm back where I started and my earphones are full of sweat.

I used to listen to music when I cycled to and from work and it took out the monotony of the twice-daily slog.

I used to listen to music in the gym when I was lifting up heavy weights and putting them back down again.

I used to listen to music when I ran. Wherever I ran.

But over time I forgot what the outside world sounded like. I couldn't remember a time when I hadn't had my headphones clamped around my skull pumping uplifting noise into my aural channels.

Running in the woods hearing the wind in the trees, the squelch and slap of thick mud underfoot, the rain-drummer beating it's snare pattern onto newly formed skins of water.

The constant whirr of tyre on tarmac and the wind whistling past my ears. The feeling of comparative speed exacerbated by the wind vectoring past my ears as I turned my head into corner after corner.

And, well... I need to block out the music channel in the gym. You can only lift so much without needing to cry out to the gods "GIVE ME METAL!" Lady Ga-Ga just doesn't cut it.

So now I run and cycle headset free. Listening to my aching bones as they creak with every bio-mechanical movement. But able to really reflect on the day rather than prolong it by blocking out my brain with hard techno.




Plus my iPod is broken.

I put it in the washing machine.

I was sad.

But if I hadn't had such a mishap I would have missed out on a remnant of the summer solstice. As I ran up to Stonehenge recently (it's right down the road!) I saw in the distance an old library bus with a large tent pitched behind it. As I drew closer I could make out the distinct sound of some psychedelic trance. As I gained ground towards the bus I heard the slightly off-time rhythm of a drummer laying their own pattern on top of the music which, by now, I had figured out was coming from a small PA in the tent. Not just bongos mind you. An actual drum kit. Snare, hi-hats and a kick drum banging over the top of the wobbly acid bass-line.

As a smile spread across my face and my feet aligned themselves with this free feed of four-beat fantastica I ran on, back home, happy that I hadn't been listening to something else.

Lady Ga-Ga is now my prime source of aggression and rage in the gym.

Trainer painer in the rainer!

Hello again, great weather we're having isn't it!

So much so that the layer of mud encrusted limpet-like onto the blubbery skin of my trainers was finally enough of a reason to give them a good old wash.

After scraping the crustaceans from my footwear I popped them into the washing machine for a short 'sports-shoes' cycle and eagerly awaited the boxfresh smell to permeate my senses as the sweaty foot smell had been doing for the last few months.

Unfortunately I failed to recall from the last time I laundered my laced lower-limb loafers that laces and washing machines are not the best of friends.

When I retrieved my clean and shiny shoes from the bowels of the beast it was soon apparent that a small memento had been retained by the Whirled Pool and I would have to be thankful nothing further had been kept as a toll by the wet tumbling demon.

One lace brutally severed in it's prime, right forever doomed to ridicule as the stumpy cousin of left.

Lesson learned.

Price paid.

So my evening run tonight will be tinted with the memory of that lost flugelbinder and the frayed end will now become soggy and dirtied as I tramp through the puddles on the track out the back. Never to return to it's former glory as the easy-eyelet-insertation device it once was.

Fallen comrade, I shall remember you.

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"Hey! Look! A pack of ten laces on Amazon for a fiver! Sweet..."

Welcome to my blog :)

Hi!

Thanks for coming to see me and read my blog. I'm a novice at this web-logging so please bear with me as I get to grips with writing things which are slightly (I'm hoping) more involved than my average status update.

My name is Sam and the secondary reason for starting this blog is to encourage me to get up out of an incredibly comfortable reclining armchair, turn off the computer and get out into the world to clear my head. And do a little running as well, albeit slow and plodding.

I'm 31 years old, 6' 2" and don't usually do much cardio-vascular exercise, preferring instead to lift weights and then 'treat' myself to some form of meat-filled pie (because it's packed with protein obviously!) followed by an evening of video games or amusing television.

I say secondary because the primary reason is a little less light-hearted.

Late last year, around September I had a phone call which started "don't worry but..." and ended "mum's had a stroke".

I'm sure you can imagine I achieved nothing but a glorious state of anxiety.

She was fine as it turned out. She'd had a little 'fall down' as she put it. She was absolutely fuming at my dad who had assumed the worst though and was trying to get her to communicate through an increasingly complex series of clicks and whistles.

No more television for that man.

Well after the first the next was less of a worry. Except this time I was in sunnier climes and couldn't get in touch for several days.

The time after that I was visiting mum when she had another 'funny turn' and was hospitalised for a week.

Each time the doctors carried out an enormous battery of tests to try to determine what exactly was causing the mini-strokes or transient ischemic attacks (TIA) but came up empty-handed every time.

Only with the greatest of luck did mum display the true symptoms of her condition for a test quite recently. She has now been diagnosed as suffering from atrial fibrillation which explains her previously unexplainable mini-strokes as sufferers of this condition have an increased risk of stroke.

So now she is on a different course of blood thinners and other marvellous miracles of modern medicine. Her speech is vastly improved and she is back to her feisty not-so-old self much to my dad's chagrin.

And so it was that I made myself a little promise to do some good and raise a little money and awareness.

In a moment of madness which some may claim as lucidity I entered a half marathon. Not due to be run until October I feel this will give me ample opportunity to 'get-myself-fit' as well as raise bucket loads of cash for The Stroke Association.

It's called the Royal Parks Half-Marathon and will be held across the green spaces of London town this autumn. I'll be wearing a very fetching singlet provided by my charity so I'll post a photo of me training in it in the near future.

Till next time, jog on.

Oh in case you were wondering about the title it basically means you should focus on the task at hand and not give in to distraction.