So I run with the knee support bandage thing now and try not to panic. I try not to panic even when my left foot toes blow up in size and go tingly or when my flatmate sneezes all around spreading horrendous germs. I try just to stay focused. I finally did the sensible thing and stopped drinking ANY alcohol. It's been a week and nearly 4 days now. Probably the longest I've survived in years. How sad is that.
Today I finally did a long run after a way too long break. It was all about testing equipment. First of all my rubbish left leg was to be tested. I removed the bandage after 1 and half hours and then ran further 30 minutes. In total I covered roughly 20 Km. It's not as far as I wanted to go but I am still very cautious with this leg.
I also tested Lucozade energy drink and one of these scary gels. I hated the gel. It made me thirsty for water but all I had with me was Lucozade. Not sure if it was needed.
And now to the main attraction of this post: BOOBS. I can not believe I'm actually posting a picture of my boobs online but one has to do it ones, yeah? The reason for this terribly offensive and immodest picture is to demonstrate the multiple uses of a sports bra. I heard this trick from another girl in the marathon training day: store the energy gels in your bra! Storage problem solved plus the gel stays nice and warm which makes it easier to consume. At least sometimes life is much easier for a woman!
Above is me looking like a real ninja just before an evening run in the freezing cold weather. The sad truth is that I'm everything but a real ninja at the moment. I'm bloody broken. My left leg started aching badly behind the knee, so week ago on Thursday I saw Blossom, the super amazing osteopath. She explained to me that my muscles were very tight and were pulling my pelvis so that my left leg actually was shorter than the right one. Then she did all sorts of tricks and I nearly fainted. I wasn't allowed to run for 48 hours and even after was advised to take it easier. She also gave me strict instructions on how to stretch and warm up properly. Problem is that there are less than 5 weeks to go to the big day and right now I should be really pushing it with long runs. That's why I feel panicky. It doesn't help that the leg still feels rather odd and now I'm worried that the actual knee is giving up as well. Blossom tried to calm me down over the phone and told me to try knee support and do silly looking running in the swimming pool. I am just so frustrated because I feel like I don't have time to let my leg heal properly!!!!
Matters were not helped few days ago when I felt that I was getting ill as well. So in a mild panic I rushed into Holland&Barret health shop and bought everything the shop assistant advised me to. I used to not to believe in natural healing and all bizarre supplements but faced with marathon panic all my principals simply vanished. I even bought every child's nightmare: cod liver oil! Mine is in capsules though but luckily in an old-fashioned scary looking jar. I placed it between my heroic looking figurines. There it symbolises strength and recovery! Omega-3 is good for joints so this fish shit should get me trough this running challenge!
For the ill feeling I got Echinacea tablets. It's a pretty flower which, according to Wikipedia, can cut the chances of catching cold by more than half. That's enough reassurance for me.
I'm going to talk about nutrition! Yes, me who hates nutrition talk. Something has happened to me now after I started running those rather long runs. The usual amount of meals and the usual size of my portions don't seem to be enough for my body anymore. The poor thing is confused. I've experienced a series of mega munchies including eating the whole tub of Häagen Dazs ice cream in matter of minutes. I've also purchased cheap sweets that come with a serious warning about the side effects(see picture above). Luckily I am a grown up....
I tend to start yawning the moment anyone mentions healthy eating or the boring word nutrition but slowly slowly my mind has started changing. I should probably pay a teeny weeny amount of attention to what and how I eat around these super runs. Problem is that all the instructions are written in this boring nutrition language that again puts me to sleep. What I gathered so far is that carbs are good. Well, I like pasta.
This is my super food salad earlier today. It has such super ingredients as spinach, green beans, carrots, nuts and above all CHOCOLATE! I was given this chocolate chip salad dressing as a present by a very cool and nice person. It's genius. Always eat chocolate, especially with your greens!
If my tummy got confused by all this mega running so did my legs. My left leg has started behaving weirdly again. This time around it just has bizarre feeling next to the knee rather than the odd numbness. I finally took some serious action to sort the problem and booked an appointment with osteopath. She was recommended to me and sounded super good and caring already on the phone. I will meet her next week.
This is my left hand all pandafied. Right hand was an impossibility so it only has plain white nails. I have to stay in the spirit of saving pandas for my charity challenge!
I am sticking to shock hair colours at the moment and didn't want to make swimming pools funny coloured so I went and bought myself an egg head! Also bought a short sleeved running top and slightly shorter running pants because the weather seemed to be getting warmer. It did not. It's freezing again.
So I am fully back on track with running. Yesterday I finally did a LONG run as well after a long break from those. I decided to test drive these Marathon socks and either it was the magic of the socks or I am just a natural long distance runner but I ran 24Km with no problems what so ever! That is 3Km more than half a Marathon and only took me 2 hours and 15 minutes. I'm fucking proud of myself.
Because of all this positive feeling I decided to run for a charity after all. I've been hesitant earlier because all the charities available seemed to be about us humans. I am sure that they are all good charities but I do feel that it is the nature that needs taken care of before us western people! But then there was WWF with their cute cuddly panda image and I knew what I had to do. The person I love most in this world is Kiira my sister and she has always been obsessed with pandas. Supporting silly clumsy bamboo eaters would be the one and only right thing to do. So I set up a fundraising page: http://www.justgiving.com/superheroninjawarrior
I can not believe that I got donations pretty much straight away! It really gave me a super boost and I feel even more determined to train hard now!
One last thing. Running 24Km has given me mega munchies. Yesterday I ate massive portion of noodles in Wagamama in record breaking time and continued with a dessert straight after. Back home I munched away a good big dinner again and shared a whole box of After Eights. Tonight I cooked mash for 2 people and ate it all but still wasn't happy. I had to visit the corner shop and found my all time favourite biscuits: chocolate topped ship biscuits! The correct way to eat them is to munch the excess chocolate away from the edges first (see the demonstrative picture below). I ate the whole box.
Oh and currently my hair is purple.
After the last post I'v spent a week not running and panicking about my weird numb leg. On Wednesday I went to Karate but struggled to stay in a fighting stance because of this weird leg problem. Luckily on Thursday my friend Jason,the sports massage guy, agreed to try to help me. He didn't know the cause of the problem either but gave a good massage. Him and my other friend Meikku gave me a bunch of tips on how to stretch better. I was also given few bizarre massage toys. The blue roll(see above) is the most painful mother fucking thing on earth! It says '66 fit' on it but I'm sure it should say '666'. I make such noises in my room, whilst rolling on it, that my housemates must think that I'm getting tortured. The explanation: 'It's just my new massage toy' doesn't seem to help either.
The other painful torture device is this spiky ball. It should help with my tight arches so I keep on rolling with that one too.
Friday morning I went swimming before work even though we had discovered a David Bowie pub the night before. So proud of myself. I managed half an hour swimming backwards and forwards in the medium speed lane. The lanes still confuse and annoy me. I'm confident that I'm the only one in the medium lane who belongs there because there's always some other idiots who go slower or faster. Grown up lane swimming is quite boring in any case. I prefer lakes and the sea during the summer!
Yesterday on Sunday I went wall climbing and my leg seem to behave. Today morning I decided it was time to put the running shoes on again. When I woke up there was snow everywhere. It was lovely to run in the white landscape. I only did a careful half an hour jog. My leg still seems sort of normal so I will try to get back to the training plan tomorrow!
The snow is long gone. Week ago my long run proved that it is much trickier to run right after the snow than in the snow. Melting parks are nearly an impossibility. Keeping balance in slush and mud mixture is not fun and defiantly not clean business. My feet were soaked and I was covered in mud. My pretty yellow running watch have proved very useful though. Threshold training goes pretty easily now. What I also started doing is run in the MORNINGS rather than evenings after work. Why I hadn't thought about it before, I really don't know. It's genius. I start work relatively late and don't even have to wake up ridiculously early to do my runs. It's so much easier in the mornings and gives you a super boost for the whole day. The best bit is that my social life is saved now. I can actually do stuff after work!!!!
Late on Thursday I finally got a new head by my personal headmaster Hannu. Need to redraw the logo for this blog I suppose...
So those were the good news. Last week was crap. After that long run I attended a birthday party and drank too much which probably spoiled my week a bit. Then I have been the biggest mother fucking idiot wanker in the universe. This is my personal life, but well, being a big fuck idiot affects ones running mood as well. On Wednesday I was so emotionally drained and physically exhausted that I skipped the karate class. This obviously annoyed me as well. But now to the biggest problem of them all: I think I have a sports injury! This morning I woke up with a numb left leg. It stayed numb. I went running in any case. Running was ok but now the leg is numb, my ankle feels bruised and the bottom of the foot feels weird as well. I'v tried to google what's wrong with me but it just makes me mega paranoid. I'm not exactly hurting but worried that if I don't fix this weird problem it will get worse and my foot needs to be amputated or turns into jelly or.... PANIC!!!!!! What do I do?????
My pretty yellow running watch arrived in post much faster than anticipated. It took me all Sunday morning to figure out how to use the thing but at 13.21.37 precisely I took off for my first ever run monitored from the space by satellites! So cool. It's actually winter in here. It snowed all day. I ran all around Hampstead Heath free from trying to memorise where I went. Loving the GPS already. Running in snow wasn't that bad at all. Beats the usual mud defiantly!
After 1h 46min and 18.25km I was back. This is where I failed with my new toy. I didn't manage to save my run. What an idiot indeed.
