A walk in the park

The physio assessment was useful. I asked for advice on maintaining the current reasonable(ish) condition of my ITBs, and some help to get them loosened up a bit, and came away with some exercises to do. She also did a bit of work on them - somewhat suspiciously, it was by far the least painful session I've ever had, but she may have been testing the water. I'm going back in three weeks' time, so we'll see what happens then. My foam roller use (every other day, more or less) has been approved - I'm glad about that, because I can feel the difference it makes. She also advised me that the muscles of my lower back are currently compensating for weakness in my core, so I've got some exercises to work on that as well as stretches for the back itself, which was pretty tight when prodded. Meanwhile, work have given me a footrest, which I'm trying to bully myself into using properly.

That morning's four-mile walk turned into a six-miler after I unaccountably turned the wrong way down a road - what is with me at the moment? Between that and the already-compressed schedule, that week's speed session ended up being dropped in favour of an extra recovery day. Last week's unfortunately went the same way, but this week should be a bit easier, so I'll just draw a line under those and move on.

Last Saturday's walk was a quiet and snowy ten-and-a-half miles around Derwent and Howden reservoirs. This being the longest walk I'd done for a while, I was a bit daunted by the distance, but it didn't feel like a challenge in the end. I was able to press on a bit in the last couple of miles, once the slush started to disappear, so the whole circuit took three hours and thirty-eight minutes. I don't rush these ones at the moment - it's nice to be able stop every now and then to admire the scenery, or stand at the water's edge and imagine three or four Lancasters rumbling out of the cloud.

There was a stumbly, slithery, foggy four-miler along the lower slopes of Stanage Edge on Monday evening. Not the most enjoyable time I've ever had on a hillside, but the wind had picked up by the time I got back down to the road and there was nobody else around, so I turned my headtorch off, put my hood down and walked along the road in darkness for half a mile or so, listening to the rustling and whistling of the trees. Very atmospheric.

The next long walk was on Wednesday, after work - a sympathetic employer is allowing me to shuffle my hours around, so I set off from home at 1640 and walked 9.5 miles through the woods and along some of the country roads nearby. Some of the roads are a bit dangerous in the dark - narrow and lacking in verges - so I'm going to avoid those in future. It is a bonus that I'm learning a lot about the part of the world I live in, doing this.

I must admit that Wednesday's was the first walk I really haven't wanted to do. It was just tiredness and the lethargy that comes after a full day's work, when there's a TV and a game of Hearthstone and a Stephen King novel at home... But you go out anyway, and it's always worth it. My back and legs both started to hurt in the last three miles or so, but stopping and stretching the back seemed to help both. I felt tired the following day, but not uncomfortable, so I'm starting to feel less afraid of the longer distances. I'm looking forward to what's coming up. 😁

Companion to owls

Last week was definitely more of a challenge. Other commitments necessitated a bit of shuffling to get everything fitted in, so I chose to do the long walk on Wednesday morning, before work. Here I am at 0455, just before setting off, with bright good morning face and trusty TTMA coffee mug:

It was a very wet morning and rather foggy as well, which contributed to a navigational error that turned a nine-miler into a ten-miler. The early part of the route passed through a belt of woodland and it was thick enough under the trees that most of my headtorch beam was bouncing back into my eyes and not doing a lot of illumination. I've experienced the effect before while running on the high ground above Port St Mary in the early morning, and there's not much you can do except trust your sense of direction. In ancient woodland with a spaghetti-like network of paths, that's a risky strategy, and I chose wrongly. I knew I'd end up in more or less the right area whichever way I went, so it was just a case of hoping for the best and resigning myself to a bit more time on the road to join up the dots if I went wrong. So it goes.

I felt the length of this walk in a way I haven't with any of the others - it may be that I've reached the point where I'm starting to extend my endurance. Having done another long walk the preceding Sunday, rather than doing them a week apart as usual, may also be a factor, but I was gently achey by the time I got to work at 0825. Walking from home to work by the scenic route seemed to go well, so I'll do the same in subsequent weeks where my weekends are out of commission.

The rest of the week didn't go entirely to plan. Sunday's short, slow walk took place as intended, but several nights' poor sleep meant Friday's speed session was bumped to the following Monday - today - to try and give myself a bit more recovery time. Things like this are annoying, but there's no point in either whingeing or beating yourself up - the walks have got to be done. I did get the session in this morning, the same route as last week's with exactly the same time, down to the nearest ten seconds - how's that for consistency? I'm hitting 14 minutes, 13 seconds to the mile on average over these short bursts and 17-18 minutes to the mile at the relaxed pace I'm using for the longer walks. I've got four months to close that gap.

Day off tomorrow, then up another notch with a slightly longer pair of walks on Wednesday and Thursday, then the next long one on Saturday. That'll make four in total this week, with the schedule a bit more compressed than usual, to account for last week's dropped session and next week's reshuffling. My spreadsheet-fu is proving very handy. 

I've booked myself in to see a physio on Wednesday. My dodgy tendons feel fine at the moment - I think my regular sessions with the Evil Foam Roller of Doom are helping - but it seems prudent to get what help I can BEFORE things go wrong. I could also do with some advice on minimising the damage I'm doing to my back by using my office chair as a general target for my bodyweight rather than sitting on it like a normal person. I am working on it!