The State of the Toes Address to the Nation

My Fellow Runners, Americans & Human Beings .....

For those that have suffered my boring 'goings on', I frequently tell people about my toes. Well one particular toe actually. My left big toe. It's a beasty and I do not like it. It's somehow, maybe injury, I don't know, but its gone and got itself Arthritis and basically doesn't bend. It bugs me a lot and it is very tender, so if anyone knocks it, I cry like a baby. But the other toes have been given a bit of a battering recently with the long runs over the tracks of Boxhill and are beginning to form a 'toe union', joined by their common suffering. A couple of toes on the right have 'gone to join the dark side'. They went like this last September after the New Forest marathon and never really got back to normal.

So on Sunday I will be rubbing Pain relief gel into the my big toe joint and will do battle with the toes. I will pound them, I will stub them and I will expect them to do their best.

'Toes, failure is not an option, you will not complain, you will not let me down. Remember, pain is only temporary'.

Training Update

Its time to taper, and I have wholeheartedly committed myself to tapering. 8km on Tuesday and 10km on Thursday. But the 10km on Thursday was with the club and with a group, not having run in a group for sometime now it was good to do it again. I felt good, not tired, and ran faster than I would on my own. Did intend to run on the weekend but did not do that either. Well I did run around a Lake in flipflops looking for the kids who were late for a tennis lesson!

Back in December I blogged. 'Yippee', 'I've got a London Marathon entry'. Today I will blog, 'yippee ..... the training is over!' The last long run is done. The last 22miler was last weekend and I thought that was it, but this week was a 15 miler. Thats a 2:10 run not a 3:10 run, but still not a short distance. So again I procrastinated until the last minute and then did the run. This is me at the end of it. See the 'yippee' in me? See the joy of having done a long run? No? Nah, nor do I. All I see is relief that these long runs are over. Its not all been like that though. I did look forward to the long runs early on in the training. But after 2 20 milers and 2 22 milers, I now feel relieved its over. Next long run is London in 2 weeks. Why blog this? So that when I read these posts after I have signed up to another marathon I will be reminded of the amount of willpower, the amount of motivation that I need, just to do the training. They say the training is the hardest part and right now I hope it is.

2 weeks to go then. 2 weeks to fend off the viruses and illnesses that all around me have. 2 weeks to think positive and build up energy for the day.

Bring it on !

Bike shoe or Running shoe?

According to the plan this week ends with a 22 mile run. The last long run before the event. Hooray! Sometimes I have looked forward to one of these long runs, but right now, I will be glad when this one is over and done.

As for the shorter mid week runs. Well they have turned into sessions on the bike in the garage. Bit of a beasty piece of work to do at the moment and then lots of picking Oliver or Daniel up from footy or friends to be done. So by the time I am free to do anything its 9pm and time to plug the Ipod in, goto the utility and decide on a shoe. Bike or running shoe? Bike has been winning each night this week.

Must say thanks to Jill Feenan this week. Out of the blue, Jill sent be a photo of me at University in my orienteering gear. Ahhhhhhh, it really should be destroyed, but just to show I have no ego here it is. The boys asked, 'Daddy, why has your mobile phone got such a big aerial?' (boys, mobiles were not invented when this picture was taken) and 'how could you have hair like that?', whilst Sarah asked, 'how did we ever get married'. I just want to know, what the heck am I wearing? Is it early wicking material or just plain nylon? Either way the static charge could probably power the giant phone.

Well look at that. I just read one of my first posts. I had a BPM in the 150-160 range. Today that BPM is in the 140's Cool and a good use for a Blog. Things have been getting better.

This week has ended with a 22 mile run. Thank God I don't have to do another one of those before the event. Theres no 2 ways about it, they are hard. Towards the end your body is screaming, 'STOP', and your head shouts, 'Why are you doing this', how you continue I don't know. This 22 mile ended at the bottom of Boxill, so I still had a 2 mile hike up the hill and back home. I guess its good to walk off all that lactate built up in your muscles!

Phil, if that was you on the A24 on that cool looking bike? Nice bike, nice shades, and we must go for a training ride after I recover from this marathon.

The wheels have fallen off

I have reached that point in my training where the wheels fall off. Last Saturday I did the 22 mile long run and that was the last run I did. I have done a grand total of zero, nada, null, none, no miles this week. So what happened? Well Sunday I was tired out after Satudays long run. Monday was a day off anyway. Tuesday I thought of some excuse and went to see Sophies school teacher. Wednesday I thought I would cycle in the garage, but thought of another excuse, last evening before Pat and Wendy go home. Thursday I had a long hard day at work then watched Casino Royale on DVD. Daniel Craig? Sarah tells me he's a hunk, well he is! Friday, well I wimped out again. The weather has been cold and wintery and it's just so much easier to believe your not feeling well, or that your toes have problems. Anything to stop you getting up and out the door will do. It's pathetic, I am in my forties and creating excuses like a school boy not wanting to goto school, and the daft thing is, once your out and going, it can be 4 degrees and windy but you won't be cold.

Sarah is so much better now than she has been. She is definately now on the road to recovery and Pat and Wendy have gone back to Cornwall for a well earned rest. They have both been fantastic and if it was not for them I would not have done any training in the last month and not been able to do the work things I needed to do this week. Thank you Pat and Wendy.

So, back to business, got to get the motivation back and run. The marathon is only a month away, 1 more hard week then tapering starts. Got to get through the next week and then it will get easier, until the day that is!

Yeeeha. I got out the door. Saturday and 25km done, it was 4 degrees, but I was not cold. New trainers so the feet felt like they were in a pair of slippers. All the excuses proved wrong. Sometimes just getting out the door is the hardest part of a run.

Morning Runs

Sarah has been recovering this week, and what a lovely week it has been. Temperature in the teens, the sun has been out. Just the week you need to paint the window frames. This is exactly what Pat has been doing for us. Thank you Pat. A job I have been putting off for 3 or 4 years and Pat has done it for me this week. Thank you. I have been couped up in air conditioned offices all week trying to meet tight deadlines. But I have managed to get my mid week runs in at 6am each morning. It's not so difficult to get out there and run 10km at 6am when the sun is out and it's warm.

The tale of woe continues in the Curtis household though. Oliver has been off school all week with a virus, Daniel caught it midweek and has been off as well. Then Sarah got it and Pat has got something as well. I can't believe it, Sarah must just be thinking the world has got it in for her and Pat is convinced he should not come out of Cornwall again! Maybe this is the reason people goto/use to goto a convalescent home.

The weekend bought me to the longest long run of the training plan. A 22 mile epic. I can't say I looked forward to this run. In fact I have been dreading it! The weather forecast said, fine on Sat. Wintery on Sun. So Saturday morning I was up at 6am, porridge, prepare the backpack, energy gels, energy drink, mobile phone and by 7am I was out the door. 3hr 8mins and 35.25km later I arrived at Brockham playing fields just in time to see Oliver play the 2nd half of his football match and get a lift back up the hill with Pat. My garmin tells me I burn 2309calories on this run, and I was 8mins faster than the last time I did a 22mile training run in Sept 2006. So I feel good and recovery has not been too bad. Still have another 22miler to look forward to ..... not!

Llamas on Boxhill

Training must be tough, I have started hallucinating. There I was trying to do a mid week run down the track to High Ashurst and I saw 2 llamas. Now I am use to seeing long horn cattle, black sheep, green woodpeckers and the normal animals like foxes, deer, dogs, horses even badgers. But until now I have never seen llama.

Sarah has not had a good week, this week. It started with her feeling terrible, so I tried to help and do my bit by taking the kids to school, then getting home from work and getting them off to bed to give Sarah a break and a rest. Then on Thursday she went into hospital for a gallbladder operation. Better out than in when it causes you so much pain. So its gone, but thats not the end of the story! She still needs to recover and still needs another ERCP sometime to remove the stents put in, in the first ERCP.

So this week I missed Running club night. I have run twice so far and biked 1 night. I need to get back into the swing of more runs. I have managed to pick it up abit this weekend. John and I did the Wimbledon 10km. A lovely day for a run, sunny and warm, what a change from the recent weather. I then did 13km around the usual loop from the house, didn't quite have the motivation to continue on to do a longer run.

Back to the plan next week though and no excuses. Sarah is home again, drinking and eating, which is great to see as she has not done much eating and has only been drinking water/lemon/sugar for what seems like ages. Granny and grandpa are coming up for a week to help out, so I am oping to get some training runs done and to get back on plan.

The plan calls for the longest long run to date. 35.2km ohhhhh, thats going to take sometime!!

Iron Horse

The first step in getting to run a marathon is to stick a training plan on the fridge door. The next step is to stay motivated and follow the plan. The third factor is to find a way of fitting the training in with all the other things in your life. My way to do this is to be flexible and when the plan says 9.6km run, then 50mins on the Iron Horse will do just the same. So on Tuesday this weeks training moved from the street to the garage and 50 mins on Iron Horse. On Wednesday a last minute rescheduling meant I found myself on Iron Horse in the garage for 50mins again. Thursday night I actually ran. DMVAC Club night, and a 7 mile tour of the hills of Dorking. Friday night was washed out by rain and a glass of wine. Saturday was meant to be a 32km long run. But Sarah is having a really bad day with the gallstone problem again. The long run was abandoned and the training ground moved from the garage to the kitchen sink. I always said 1hr in the kitchen is worth 2hrs running! Still tomorrow is Sunday and hopefully Sarah will be feeling better, then I can get my long run done. Overall for the week my total distance will be down, but at least I will have done the long run. Sunday was forecast to be rain but I got out early and managed a largely dry 32km. The final 6km were wet though! So, yee haa, I got the long run done. A statistic from this run is that I burned 1944 calories. I earned the chocolate pud today. Sarah is really unwell today, its as if she has another gallstone stuck. She really does not want this. So, after a 20 mile run I was on children duty. Which brings me to, todays advise. Do a marathon, triathlon, whatever before you have kids. One, because your body is more able to take the training, and two, you really do have more time in a day when your younger.