Genevieve's Journeys

I regularly notice things either en route to work, or in my day, that are terribly witty and worth sharing.

But I don't seem to get the time to put them in writing.

Real-world recap:

I really enjoyed hearing the Canadian election outcome, though felt sorry for NDP which now has a few years of rebuilding to do.

It's been a pretty good fall in London for weather and fall colours; reasonably dry for most of September and October, which meant I've done more running than before.

I've been diligently getting out at lunch hours, and alternating w/ lunch hours in the gym, doing both physio-recommended stretches and some strength moves.

As a partial result of running, I now have my R foot strapped up, to manage plantar fasciitis. Have to freeze a bottle of water to roll under my foot this evening. Oooops.

Apparently ignoring the dull ache in your foot til it becomes a sharp pain in your foot is not the appropriate response.

Still going to physio regularly to try to manage lower back pain. I can feel that I've gained more mobility in my lower back and pelvis, and I walk more carefully and consciously than before.

Weekends where I'm wearing flat medieval shoes on hard surfaces really show themselves up at the physio.

I'm already on 2 weeks sabbatical from running, to see if I can shake the referred pain down 1 leg. So this week I'm walking not running at lunch. Fortunately the break coincides with weekends away when I couldn't get to a parkrun anyway.

It's halfterm in London so the constant commuting pressure eases off by about 20% as all the parents take time out while their kids get a week off. I treasure this week for travel, but you're always covering for someone in the office who's away this week.

Next week I hope to take 1 day off, to see the current Celts exhibit at the British Museum.

I found out about parkrun this year after 3+ mentions of it in a copy of Runner's World - there was a cover article about 5k running, which is why I picked it up. I wondered if parkrun had sponsored the mentions, there were so many.

I've been thinking about going for months, but just before Double Wars wasn't the time to start. At that point I couldn't even picture getting out of bed before 9am on a Saturday.

Don't know why exactly today was the day - possibly watching the world championship athletics this week put it in mind - I loved watching it through lunchtime while I was in the gym. Beats the hell out of news and crappy music videos. Puts your own efforts into perspective, but in a good way, not a depressing way.

So today I ran the one closest to me - one I could find on the bus route - in Harrow.

I figure it was my running that inspired Mo Farah - he's just won the 5,000m in Beijing. :-)

Don't yet know my time. I was so shattered as I crossed the finish I didn't hear the time. I wasn't absolutely last, but I think I was the last runner - the rest were run-walkers.

I did walk 3x - there is a gentle slope on the course in this park, and I found on the laps that it was a good point to walk for 30 paces.

The run director was very kind - asked my name, how I'd found parkrun, then how I did afterward, my impressions, would I do it again.

I suggested setting one up in the local county park - he said he'd run x-country there, but it was potentially muddy - guess they have to choose routes that will be reliable and predictable, even w/ poor weather.

I'm now back at work after almost 2 weeks away. I started coughing on a Friday, and spent most of the 2 weeks following either in bed or on the sofa, coughing. One evening I managed to pull my stomach muscles, making coughing pretty miserable.

My days were livened only by Time Team for 2 hours every weekday afternoon.

The GP surgery decided to start its new booking system the week I needed an appointment, so it took 3 attempts to get in; once to see a nurse (who couldn't prescribe, even though I asked about it on the phone); once to phone to get to *talk* to a GP; once to actually see someone.

I got my first 'fit note' (the new and improved 'sick note'), which actually signed me off til yesterday. First inhaler too.

Ever since I had bronchitis at 12, my cough has sounded absolutely horrible: I sound like an asthmatic baboon aspirating a snail. So at least I am demonstrably recovering from illness, and have the moral high ground, and on the receiving end of sympathetic noises.

Robert was sick through the whole of Christmas, missing the holiday entirely, recovering only well into the new year.

I've been sick through half of February.

On top of that, I'm still commuting half the week to south London; so both of us are spending 2+ hours on the Tube and buses, and getting home grumpy and tired.

So this is proving to be a pretty discouraging and depressing season.

Roll on spring, anytime.

Our office now has TVs, which we've largely used to watch big sports events - Wimbledon, notably, and now the Olympics.

To my horror I found not one or two but THREE channels of hockey by the end of yesterday, covering just two live games. Argh.

Today it's either curling (urgh) or cross country skiiing. I really like Xcountry, the little I've done, and this is way cooler than watching people fall down a mountain strapped to pieces of wood-substitute. (It was striking just how many elite athletes did not finish their runs, either in downhill events or in the silly snowboarding race.)

For some reason, even in these enlightened days, the women still race shorter distances than the men in cross country skiiing.

If women can run marathons, duathalons and triathalons, surely they can hobble their way through 15km, instead of 10km, for the middle distance? and can stagger through 50km for the long distance, instead of 30km?

These are serious endurance athletes who probably log this much distance in a routine training week.

The curlers curl the same length of ice.

The hockey players have the same size of rink, and (these days) now wear the same national colours. The figure skaters have the same events, though I still don't think their 'sport' belongs in the Olympics.

The biatheletes shoot the same size of target using the same guns (though again, the womens' skiing distances are a quarter shorter! WTF?).

Short track? (just checked, short distances are the same, longest distance is 5k for men and 3k for women, unbelieveable).

The traditional speed skaters do the same short distances, but there's no 5k and 10k event for women... apparently they just fall over after 3k (well, lots do, but only briefly).

(Aside: the Netherlands skaters are a great example of 'doing one thing well' - they're just clobbering this event, and had all three medals in one of the skating events yesterday.)

Why are the women still trailing behind in the skiing and skating endurance events? Dumb dumb dumb.

Also: I've found out why Britons keep calling skeleton the 'tea tray event' - it's because noone has sleds, toboggans or crazy carpets at home. So they don't have the cultural background of sliding downhills on pieces of kit built for that purpose.

But the nation of tea drinkers DO have tea trays - even if they don't use them, even if they now have largely abandoned their teapots and cozies and specialist teatimes. They still have teatrays. So that's what they use to slide down hills, on the rare occasions there's snow on them.

Went for a run for the first time in weeks yesterday - complaining back, then complaining knees, then Raglan recovery delayed me much of July & August. Man do I miss this.

After work, I went out in search of new running shoes. I think I've found the ugliest shoes in creation, and bought them.

Normally the colour would put me off...but I was wearing the one and only Barbie-pink blouse I own, which was exactly the same colour as the shoes. (It's linen blend and was on sale, so sue me.)

And the shoes were on sale.

But really, they are very pink.

I'm testing out this minimal-cushioning-to-replicate-natural-gait stuff. It makes sense, to a point: our feet are already well designed to run.

The catch is that nature didn't make concrete sidewalks and asphalt paths. I try to run on grass, but I have to run on sidewalks to reach the grass in the parks.

I really, really want to regain some of the stamina I had this time last year, pre-pneumonia; late last autumn I managed 6k round the park... and within days had a cold, and it went downhill from there. I think the occasional 10k is very do-able, if I'm careful about my knees and back.

I want next Raglan to be, if not effortless, then not quite the physical struggle it was this year, to do what I wanted - and I didn't get to do as much as I'd hoped for.

Another resolution: more stretching. I'm already using a standing desk, now I have to move more, not just stand like a statue, and stretch more through the day. I was more stiff this year at Raglan than I remember from previous years.

Thanks to several months of enforced inactivity, I'm feeling uncomfortably round, and had an unpleasant encounter with a measuring tape recently.

So I'm resolved to get out of the office at lunchtime more often for walks - daily isn't too often - and I'm considering drastic measures, for me: Saturday Candy.

I encountered this at Crown this year in Nordmark - that some good Swedish parents still limit their kids' intake of junk to Saturdays. I'd never heard of something so, so, so....sensible. Sheesh. (Especially when the Western world is staring an obesity epidemic down the gullet - how do the Swedes manage it, when everyone else is so helpless?)

So I'm seriously thinking: I don't eat a lot of candy, but I do like biscuits, particularly at work. I do like a sweet to follow dinner, of some kind. And I don't know if I can follow through, when my beanpole-shaped-sweetie noshes down on his treats in the evening. Could I actually follow a Saturday Candy rule?

(I'm painfully suggestible, I've discovered. Don't remember this always being the case, but by god, if I'm reading about someone enjoying a pot of coffee, all of a sudden nothing short of a pot of coffee will do...similarly when someone says 'I'd love a cup of tea' on TV, etc.)

I was put in mind of it (see? suggestible) by a BBC food article about a family giving up sugar because of a daughter's Type 1 diabetes.

I know a few people who avoid sugar, but why would you substitute dextrose for sucrose (shown in one recipe)? It all turns into sugar in your body, doesn't it?

...when all you can do is moan about your ailments. 

Going to a sporting goods store recently for new running kit, I also was in search of elastic joint supports. And I realised that they were all for my right side - right foot, right knee (well, shinsplints immediately below the knee actually) and right elbow.

This is a bit odd, since I'm left-handed and somewhat left-sided - not to exclusion of my right side, but decidedly. 

The elbow is worrying me a bit. The main right-side activity is, of course, using the mouse at work - I learned right-handed, and just never changed. But I really noticed it at Raglan, when I didn't want to hold the buckler for any length of time in my right hand, and had to pack it in early at the last fencing practice. (The support is for the next fencing practice.)

There's tendonitis, plus some muscle tension in my upper arm and shoulder that surprised even my osteopath. He was happy to treat it, but pointed out that I had to figure out the cause to really fix it.

Since then I've had my desk seating assessed (changed seat height), changed my mouse, and installed more nagware on the PC, to keep me from sitting near-motionless for long stretches. I've also tried to avoid repetitive hobbies in the evenings (knitting and hand sewing) which seemed to aggravate the elbow, though I don't want to give them up forever.

Right foot is a mystery: I wake up in the morning, and can't put my R foot flat on the floor w/out pain, in the mid-foot, what I'd call the instep. After 5 mins of bearing weight, though, it's fine, and seems happy. But some times this pain is more serious than others, sometimes quite sharp, and I wondered if an elastic support would change it.

I've noticed though that my left and right feet no longer match. There's a bump in the space above the arch of my right, and it's a bit wider than my left. On a particularly sore-foot day, it was swollen. I'm wondering if it's something to try to remedy now, or if I can ignore it, as I've been doing for months (can't remember when it started, but probably in the past two years).

I've looked up running injuries, but I don't think this is plantar fascitis, and I already know what shinsplints are.

Right knee - I've had shinsplints on and off for years in both legs, this is the first time it's flared up in earnest, so I'm limiting myself to 3 runs a week at my usual leisurely pace, with occasional long weekend runs, and bought squidgier shoes. 

I'm not convinced they're any improvement though - when you have softer shoes you're just freer to pound the pavement harder, whereas if you have less cushioning, you moderate your stride - at least, you do after the first day of serious swelling and soreness. I've rarely had sore feet from my unpadded, unshaped medieval shoes, usually because I'm on grass or non-pavement at a site.

I'm also trying to stretch more, with mixed results; I don't often feel much different from stretching, though I enjoy it.

Sometimes I watch seniors on the streets, walking so hunched, or hobbling, or limping heavily, and I wonder how they got to that stage of physical impairment. Did they neglect a small ailment, or are they work related? Would osteo treatment, or better shoes have helped earlier on? (My pronation was corrected when I was a teenager.) Part of my mum's back problems are from having one hip higher than the other, from carrying a heavy nursing bag for years.

There's not much help for chronic arthritis, obviously; but I want a body that works reasonably well into my old age. 

Robert and I spent a relaxed day today - first visiting the Tudor house within walking distance of us(!) that we'd never visited, then braving the hordes at Camden market for clothes from Braintree. I typically try to avoid the market on weekends and holidays, but we're pressed for leisure time between now and when my mum visits post-Easter.

We also stopped at my favourite running shop and scored with these - are they cool or what?

I'll be the envy of the runners in the park!



The best part is - I didn't even ask for them in purple. That's the only colour they had in this style. Awesome.

 Almost all my circle of acquaintances sit for a living. I certainly do...



Via: Medical Billing And Coding

I went for the longest run I've had in years - 41 minutes, most of the way through Victoria Park.

Over the winter I felt like I'd never run again.

A couple of months ago, I did well to manage 21 minutes, and it took all my energy to manage it.

I'm hugely pleased.

*beaming*