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My first long run in a while

I would like to write a running-related post that doesn’t refer to my hamstring, but unfortunately that’s not where I’m at.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. I’ve had two relatively successful runs this week. I ran 4 miles on Monday and then 8 miles after work on Wednesday. They weren’t perfect but they’re giving me hope.

The four miles I probably ran a bit too quickly I guess but it felt comfortable and I didn’t push the pace consciously. I was just enjoying being out.

The run on Thursday evening was a bit of a worry to me. I wanted to do it later in the day so my body was more warmed up. And because I stand most of the day at work now as I have a standing desk, I wanted to do it straight after work, rather than drive home and do it there.

Kyle said he’d join me which was nice and it worked out well because we had some time to kill before going to his sister’s house for dinner that evening.

The first two miles felt fine. We kept the pace nice and easy. Though I wanted to relax and chat, I found myself just concentrating so hard on what was happening with my leg that I probably wasn’t that good company to Kyle.

Unfortunately after the first few miles my left knee (same as the hamstring problem leg) started to give me a random pain. We stopped and I stretched and as we started again (my mind literally thinking this was it, it was over) it felt fine again. How random.

My hamstring/glute did start to ache a bit as the run continued though and it didn’t feel particularly comfortable. But it didn’t slow me down or make me change my gait so we pushed on. In fact, it just remained a constant ache the entire way through the run without getting worse.

What really surprised me about this run was that my endurance and fitness felt absolutely fine. Had my hamstring not been feeling uncomfortable I’m almost certain I could have gone on for a good few miles more before I’d start to struggle. This is HUGELY comforting to know. I haven’t run more than four miles for thirteen weeks. So it’s pretty crazy my body seemed fine with it. What’s helped, I’m guessing, is that we weren’t pushing the pace. It was very conversational, despite my moments of intense silent concentration. Kyle was fantastic is keeping me on a tight lease and pulling me back which definitely helped.

I have of course being doing cardio at the gym too, so I’m pleased this has carried over. Doing the stair machine frequently (and up to an hour sometimes once a week) has clearly helped. THANK GOD.

To be honest though, I would give up my fitness and endurance if I could lose the discomfort in my leg. But hey ho. I’m taking comfort from the fact that straight afterwards and today it doesn’t feel worse. Also, when I refer back to my training notes when I’ve previously had this issue I was able to run several long runs with the issue (even up to 17 miles) and it didn’t get worse. Thank god I’m so anal about these things as it helps mentally when I question what I’m doing.

Realistically, I do think it’s going to take time for this to disappear. And as long as running doesn’t hinder that by making it worse, I think I’m OK. I just need to be sensible with the build up, my pace and the recovery of each run. It’s definitely a mind boggling and stressful process but it is what it is. If it gets worse/regresses, then I’ll make some hard choices.

So I continue. A few runs every week, gently building up the miles. Fingers crossed.

How is your training going?

How do you come back after an injury?

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A Winchester run and brunch and my game plan

The weekend just gone my lovely friend, Emma, and I had planned to meet up and do the Winchester parkrun followed by brunch.

She lives in Reading and we wanted a location that would be nice and relatively half-way. After some deliberation we decided on Winchester because, though it’s not really half-way, it is a lovely place and there were a couple of different brunch spots that took our fancy.

Unfortunately as we got closer to the weekend we realised Winchester parkrun had been cancelled. Ah, that scuppered that plan! After to’ing and fro’ing we decided to still go but do our own run together instead. Winchester is a beautiful place and has a nice river area to run along.

But before I get to Saturday, first Friday night. I just have to mention the meal we had at the Merchant House. Kyle and I went out with some friends from work. Happily I like the people I work with so it was a fun time. And the food was, as before, so good.

I went for the triple chicken burger with a portion of the loaded burnt end fries.

I actually felt a little embarrassed because last time I shared them with Kyle but this time I wanted my own portion… I liked them so much and I’m greedy. But the reason I was embarrassed was because one of my colleagues turned up and the first thing he said was “oof the portions here are huge so I’m going to give the fries a miss!”. Ahh here Anna goes again being the one who eats the most… but it was damn good and I enjoyed every bite.

Moments like these do make me feel like the most greedy person in the room because generally I do eat the most. It’s just that I enjoy food. I’m not stuffing myself to a ridiculous level, I do just think I have a big appetite and can eat a lot. But it does make me sometimes feel self-conscious when I eat more than everyone else…

But back to Saturday. I met with Emma at 9am and we ran four miles together.

The weather was lovely and sunny, but not too hot, and we kept the pace conversational so we could catch up. We regularly stay in touch through messages but it’s always nice to see someone in person.

She’s doing Chicago Marathon as well so it was nice to hear about her training – though it did give me major anxieties about my lack of training. This was the longest run I’d done for over 10 weeks. But no panic, no panic. I can only do what I can. At this point I’m still not 100% certain I will do Chicago…

Anyway the four miles were relatively comfortable, though there was a low lying discomfort it was still feeling better.

We then headed to the Dispensary Kitchen for some brunch.

I decided on the vegetarian breakfast after seeing it being whisked by me to another customer (it looked delicious!) and Emma went for poached eggs on avocado and toast. We shared a fruit and yogurt platter.

The food was delicious and looked gorgeous. I felt very saintly. It had halloumi, mushrooms, poached eggs, sourdough toast, avocado and homemade baked beans. The fruit platter was incredible as well. So much food! Just how I like it 😉

It was such a lovely meet-up 🙂

When I got home I decided on another two miles because I really wanted to get six for the day. My reasoning behind this was because I wanted to increase to eight miles the next week.

This is going to be a sink or swim lead-up to Chicago now. I just have to get into training. If my hamstring says “nope” and regresses then I know that Chicago isn’t going to happen. I’ve already taken over 10 weeks off of running. I’ve rehabbed as best as I can (I still am), I’ve avoided anything that aggravates things, I’ve seen two different physios and changed my trainers.

At this point I think I just have to try consistently running and see what happens. Obviously I’m going to be sensible and not suddenly go out and do a 20 miler or five runs a week. But I’d like to do three runs a week and one of those runs gradually building up. I won’t get higher than 16-17 miles before Chicago (if all goes well in my plan) but I’m absolutely fine by that.

I just want to run issue-free. Times and paces literally don’t matter to me right now. When I had this issue a few years ago after the Boston Marathon I managed to get back into long running with some persisting symptoms but otherwise it didn’t get worse.

So I know each run isn’t going to feel perfect or the discomfort entirely disappear just yet, but I can’t be frightened to run. As long as it doesn’t make it worse. That’s my rationale right now. I so hope this works!

How was your weekend?

Have you ever run through an injury?

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A failed parkrun but an epic burger

Coming back from injury is a tumultuous and emotional process (for me anyway).

You fill yourself huge amounts of hope and excitement. Yesss I can run. I can’t wait to jump ease back into training. Things start to feel very positive after so much negativity and darkness (perhaps an exaggeration, but you get the vibe).

I woke up on Saturday morning and straight away knew my hamstring was feeling pretty terrible. The plan was for Kyle and I to go to Netley as we hadn’t been in so long and I missed seeing people I used to regularly touch base with. I wanted to catch up with my friend Mike as well. Kyle wasn’t feeling particularly well but both of us, possibly unwisely, carried on anyway.

As we walked on over to the start area I knew deep down this wasn’t going to go well but I pushed that feeling aside and convinced myself a miracle would occur.

Of course a miracle did not occur. As soon as I started running it felt uncomfortable. Not quite as bad as pre-new physio but definitely not great. Ehhhh this was pants. I was glad to have no one running with me (Kyle was running solo – I didn’t want to hold him back again). I could spend my time focusing on how it felt and wondering what to do.

I was literally spiralling through so many thoughts… do I stop? Am I making it worse? Is it as bad as before? Should I push on through? And all the while I would have different people I knew overtake me as I increasingly got slower, and they’d say something along the lines of, “Either I’m running too fast or you’re running slowly!” with a chuckle.

And I don’t mind that people are overtaking me or that I’m running slowly but it just further compounded that I wasn’t running at my natural pace. I was running well over 9 minute miles. And of course there’s nothing wrong with that, but I felt I couldn’t run faster. Not because of fitness but because my injury was holding me back.

So in the end I stopped before the first mile. I found a point on the course I could quickly dash off from so few people would notice. I didn’t want someone to see and ask if I was OK. I just wanted to disappear. I was embarrassed, frustrated and angry. As I pulled away from the course I burst into tears. It was pathetic really but I just felt so frustrated and annoyed.

A lovely woman walking her dog asked if I was OK and it did feel ridiculous trying to explain what was wrong. In the end I just said I was OK and I rung my dad (who later told me having a phone call from me at 9:12 on a Saturday morning is never going to bode well…).

Kyle was still running so I just sobbed to my dad about how sad I was and how I felt panicked about Chicago and how I thought I was heading in the right direction…until now.

Eventually, after morosely walking around the cricket pitch away from the course, I headed back to the parkrun area. I didn’t want to cheer anyone on. I didn’t want to talk to anyone really. I felt embarrassed and I didn’t want to explain I was injured. I found Kyle and Mike, who’d just finished, and I explained how I’d pulled out and that I just wanted to go home. Mike understood, gave me a hug and then Kyle and I left.

Kyle was obviously lovely and we had a nice day ahead of us going to Bournemouth so I quickly cheered up. We got showered and sorted and then sat in the long traffic to get to Monty’s Burger Lounge to meet up with some of Kyle’s friends.

We’ve been to this restaurant before (over a year ago!) and we loved it. I’d recently won a burger from them as well through Instagram (they ran a competition and I won it) so it was the perfect place to meet with his friends.

I gave Kyle the free burger as I’m not a huge burger fan. The burger is called The Sinner and contains chicken nuggets, hasbrowns (which I don’t like), a 12oz beef patty, pulled pork sauce and American cheese. So pretty epic.

I, of course, had two lots of BBQ chicken wings. I adore their wings. So juicy and tasty. Probably some of my BBQ flavoured favourite wings (buffalo are still my all-time favourite).

And I also had a portion of mozzarella bites (coated in cheesy Dorita crisps!).

We had a lovely time eating and chatting away to Kyle’s friends. It massively helped take my mind off of my failed run. There are so many more important things in life and having lovely people to spend your time with helps puts things into perspective 🙂

But my hamstring thankfully feels a bit better and I hope to continue trying to run. I’m seeing my new physio again this week so FINGERS CROSSED.

Have you ever got upset about a failed run?

Have you ever had a parkrun DNF?

What’s your preference: Buffalo or BBQ wings? I’m also partial to vegan wings too – either cauliflower or tempeh, both are nice!

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Hamstring Update

Not to dwell too much on the old hamstring situation because I’m trying to stay POSITIVE. But a little update in how it’s going.

So I’ve been strengthening it as much as I can at the gym. I would guess I’m in the phase of the injury where it’s more safe to stress it out a bit in order to strengthen it. I’m doing more functional and, well, “weighty” exercises. These include nordic curls, sled pushing, reverse box jumping, glute kickbacks with more weight and lying hamstring curls.

I attempted a mini run last night. I went out aiming for about 1km… it didn’t feel great I won’t lie. It didn’t feel terrible but it certainly didn’t feel like a particularly comfortable run. It niggled the entire way but stayed consistent in its discomfort rather than getting worse. Walking around afterwards and the next day didn’t feel any different either.

I do wonder whether that length of a run isn’t really much of a good test but I’m being super cautious because of Chicago (14.5 weeks away). I want to try another run soon, but longer. If I’m honest I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing at the moment but at the same time, I’m taking a very measured and gentle approach. Any set-back on my hamstring and I’d immediately stop. My thoughts are that I do need to stress the hamstring out a little in this very functional way in order to get stronger.

When I had this issue after Boston a few years ago (where I believe this is where it all started but has been low level hiding since) I ran quite a lot through the issue. I’m very fastidious with tracking my “training”. I have an Excel sheet that I track all my workouts, gym and running, and will write details about them. It helps me track what I’m doing at the gym (weights, sets, reps) and when I’m injured I can refer back and read about how that run workout, what I was doing to manage things etc. This is obviously super helpful now. Each run I did I would say things like “urgh hamstring niggled throughout” or “deadlifts definitely made my hamstring worse” and I can see how many miles I ran and when it started to get better.

From the looks of it, it took about 11 weeks to heal. 11 weeks. I actually feel sick typing that. What I quickly have to remind myself though is that I’m a lot more “educated” now. Like when the issue first cropped up then I continued doing heavy deadlifts and pushing my hamstring when I should have let it calm down before gentle incorporating very specific hamstring exercises back in (like I am at the moment). I was also super reluctant to stop running (I continued to run for 5 weeks).

So my hope is that THIS time around I’ll be back to comfortable running in less time. I’m currently on week 5 of not running and strength training diligently and sensibly. By dealing with my injury in a very controlled way and having this plan and focus I’m helping myself not fall too much into the Well of Darkness that often plagues injured runners. I have my down moments and I’m trying not to panic about Chicago but I’m only human after all.

Anyway, onto happier and more pleasant things…. sausages. I was sent some sausages and burgers again from the lovely people from Wild and Game.

They sent me some Premium Grouse & Wild Boar sausages.
I adore these sausages (to be honest I really really like all Wild & Game sausages).

They are SO fricking tasty. I made a really random meal for Kyle and I one evening – basically emptying the fridge of stuff that needed eating and I threw in the sausages chopped up with a load of vegetables and it was DIVINE.

Kyle was even super impressed – he loved them.

And they also sent some Pheasant & Venison burgers.

Again, these were so tasty. The sausages and burgers do have a rich and gamy taste but not overwhelmingly so. They just taste very flavoursome and meaty.

This is because there is 47% Wild Boar and 25% Grouse in the sausages (for comparison Richmond Thick sausages contain 42% pork). The burgers contain 40% Pheasant and 35% Venison. Good quality ingredients and less “filler”. And the products are low fat because of the meat they’re using (game is less fatty compared to traditional sausage and burger meat like pork and beef).

What’s your favourite kind of sausage?

Do you eat game a lot?

Do you think I’m doing the right thing with my hamstring?

**Full Disclaimer: I was sent the Wild & Game products for free inexchange for a review. All opinions are my own honest ones.**

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My hamstring injury

Not running right now definitely sucks.

A few weeks of it was alright – I probably needed the break. But then another week and another week and I’m getting grumpy about it. It’s not do with losing fitness (though that is quite annoying of course), but more to do with missing being outside in the fresh air and my having my usual routine.

I also like to keep the gym to mostly strength based training. So now incorporating cross training (with the likes of the elipitical machine, the step machine and walking backwards on the treadmill – more on that later) it seems I’m spending a lot of the time in the gym just doing the cardio stuff I find ever so dull.

So my injury is do with my “high” hamstring, where it connects to my bum basically. I’ve had a bit of a long-standing issue with this since the Boston Marathon but it’s been manageable. Basically I can only just start to feel it if I’ve run a long way or I’ve been sat down for hours.

It became a lot worse after sitting for four hours on the train straight after the Manchester 10k . I got off the train my hamstring and completely seized up. But I just thought it was something that would be fine once I got moving and I continued to run and then I blasted out the Romsey Beer Race (knowing it would make it worse). And here I am.

It’s a tricky injury because of its position; not much blood gets to it and I have to do a lot of sitting for my job, which isn’t great for its recovery. It’s not painful but it is a constant discomfort. When I run it sort of feels like it’s tugging at it and becomes more uncomfortable. So I haven’t run at all.

Just casually staring at the floor

What I have done is a lot of rehabbing at the gym. It’s hard to know exactly what is good and what is bad. I’ve seen my physio a few times and he’s been great with helping it and giving me advice. I’ve looked online (I KNOW I KNOW, terrible idea).

What I’ve gauged from online is that there’s very little research on this area into what’s best. What I have gleamed are the best exercises to do and what to avoid.

I’ll obviously preface this with: I am clearly not a physio, doctor or have any real scooby about any other body but my body (and I’m on a thin line with that at best). Please take care.

Best exercises for high hamstring tendinopathy:

  • Glute bridge: I begun by doing two legged bridges, then focused on single leg (lifting one leg).
  • Hip thrusts: I also do weighted hip thrusts (either low rep with a high weight, or high rep with a lower weight).
  • Glute kickbacks: I use the cable machine in the gym and the foot attachment and then gently kick my leg back without bending my body. I focus on using my glutes and hamstring and prevent my back helping. I do the movement gently but used weight that I found tough to go over 15-20 reps.
  • Eccentric box jumps: the idea behind eccentric box jumps (jumping off a box) is that it’s less of an aggravation than jumping onto the box. It’s a controlled impact to strengthen your hamstring, but to be used wisely.
  • Lying single hamstring curls
  • Retro walking: this is a fancy term for walking backwards on the treadmill. I put the incline up to the highest it can go and have the speed setting on to a fairly fast walk (but I did build up to this because it’s quite scary at first!). This is a great way to get some cardio in without stressing the hamstring out. You look like a weirdo but it works.
Glute kickback

Things to avoid:

  • Basically anything that causes compressive load on the hamstring at the beginning. So exercises like deadlifts (which I rarely ever do now since the injury after Boston because I know it flares it up), squats, seated hamstring curls or lunges. I’m avoiding them completely until the discomfort has gone as I don’t want it to flare up again.
  • Sitting for long periods isn’t great (but understandably unavoidable for those who like me.
  • Cycling (I did spin and this did not help matters!)

The exercises that I do I let my discomfort guide me. I never let my hamstring feel pain above a three but I do push it to work hard. The idea is strengthening it by stressing it to build it back up stronger, but not weakening it by damaging it further. It’s a fine balance… one I’m trying to get to grips with.

I do think I should probably try running soon. I’m just nervous. Nervous about how it’ll feel and nervous it’ll make it worse and lengthen my recovery and nervous. Obviously I won’t go for a 10k run, it’ll be a gradual thing. I just need to work out when.

Chicago Marathon isn’t that far away (15 weeks) and if I think too much about it and what’s at stake I start to panic and fall into a dark well of fear and sadness. Having a plan is what’s holding me together. I just need to make sure this plan is moving forwards not backwards.

Have you ever had hamstring issues?

Do you have any advice?