It has been quite a while since i posted my last parkrun report (in fact the last one was on my birthday on 17th February last year!). There is a very good reason for this. The day after my birthday I came down with a serious dose of procrastination which has lasted all the way to today, the 29th April 2020! 1yr and 2mths of this debilitating condition. It’s not new. In fact I’ve been suffering from it to varying degrees for most of my adult life, and that was after having it almost continuously for the duration of my childhood.
Somehow, being in lockdown has lifted the mental veil, and I feel ready to bring myself up to date with where i had got up to vis a vis the Parkruns before they were shutdown on 21st March 2020!
Once I’ve done my update I’m going to share, with whoever happens to come across this minor blog in the gargantuan soup of blogs in the blogsphere, my thoughts on getting back into running to where I am now (I experienced the ‘Zone’ during my run yesterday for the first time in about 6 years!).
Procrastination was beginning to show itself through the cracks early on in my blogging experience, in fact there were 10 parkruns that i failed to blog about before stopping completely in February 2019. These were……
- Hackney Marshes
- Southwark Park
- Harrow Lodge Park
- Grovelands Park
- Clapham Common
- Pymmes Park
- Dulwich Park
- Valentines Park
- Wanstead Flats
- Beckenham Place
February 2019 I completed another 19 parkruns (I know, I had also lost the will to get up at a ridiculous hour every Saturday morning, for some reason!) with my last one being in South Oxhey on 25th January 2020, just before I headed to Australia to see my brother. They were…..
- Wimbledon Common
- Orpington
- South Norwood
- Tooting Common
- Nonsuch Park
- Roundshaw Downs
- Wormwood Scrubs
- Gunnersbury
- Dartford Heath
- Dartford
- Harrow
- Hilly Fields
- Sunny Hill
- Lloyd Park
- Victoria Dock
- Crystal Palace
- Aldenham Country Park
- Osterly Park
- South Oxhey
This makes a total of 48 runs. I had decided in the end to run all the parkruns within the M25, which is about 70, but at the time I really should have just left it at the ‘London’ ones (about 60), since I was already starting to lose momentum and getting a bit weary of the project by then.
Of course, now that I haven’t been able to do them for the last 6 weeks, I have gained enthusiasm again, and have promised myself that as soon as they start i am not going to miss a saturday until i achieve my goal!
Opening of my Virtual Clinic!
I have had to shutdown my osteopathic clinic, Backs & Beyond, except for emergencies, and we don’t know when we will be able to open. However, it has given me the opportunity to set up a ‘Virtual Clinic‘ where I conduct video consultations with patients, assess their problem, diagnose as far as i can over video, and then recommend techniques and exercises that they can do to help themselves get better.
It’s also allowed us to raise money for the Red Cross Coronavirus Appeal as we aren’t charging for the consultations but suggesting that patients donate to our justgiving page. At the time of writing this we’ve “treated” 100 patients, and raised over £1700 for the Red Cross. Our target is £3000. Fingers crossed!
Another positive coming out of this lockdown for me has been that it has allowed me to concentrate far more on running, as it is now easy to structure my day so that I can include exercise.
My Running Related Thoughts and Tip
So I’m now running 5 days per week, and with the “rest” days I’m doing some strength training which may include a HIIT workout or some TRX training. This differs to what i was doing before by one extra run a week.
After 4 weeks of running about 4x5k and 1x10k per week, with one of the 5k runs being a slightly faster one, I developed a sudden right sided hamstring injury, about 10 minutes into one of my easy runs. This laid me out for a few days, and got me thinking about the cause of my overuse injury.
My conclusion was that I wasn’t properly warming up. I’ve always run straight out of the door, although doing the first mile easy, but i realised that this is not a good way to warm up. Hence my tip:
- Walking for 1-2km first is a great way of warming the body up before running, and it also allows you to appreciate the calm that comes with walking. By the time i’ve walked 2k i feel energised, warm, supple and comfortable – different to the stiff, tired feeling I normally have when starting a run. The first kilometer or two has always been difficult for me, even at a young age, so this has been a revelation for me. It helped me return to running following the injury very quickly, and I will now never again go out of the door and start running straight away!
- At the end of my run I also feel much calmer and so much more comfortable in my muscles and joints. It’s quite incredible. As an osteopath I am not overly surprised that it’s easier on my body from warming up, but what i AM surprised about is the extent of that ease. It has made stretching a pleasure afterwards.
That’s all folks!
So for the next week or two I am going to research the benefits of heart rate zone training. The reason for this is that I am finding myself very tired from all the extra running i’ve been doing, and I’ve heard that HR training can help you avoid the post exercise fatigue and decrease your recovery times.
I’ll blog about how i’m getting on in a week. Here we go…….
Gavin's Blog 