I’ve never been to India or Nepal before, so as part of my preparation for the trip, I booked myself in to see the nurse at my local doctor’s surgery and find out what sort of medication I might need for the trip. I imagined that I would need things like Maleria tablets and possibly a top up injection or to having recently been to Argentina.
I ended up having to get 7 injections, a booster for one of the shots i had for Argentina , a set of 3 rabies shots and a set of 3 hepatitis shots, apparently the part of India i’m going to has a problem with rabies in bats and its common for of blood transfusions not to be screened, so if i have an accident running and need any sort of blood transfusion or injections there are hepatitis risks.
I was also surprised to heard that i infact don’t need Malaria tablets, as in the nurses words, ‘ the mosquitos that spread Malaria can’t survive at those sort of altitudes – there simply isn’t enough oxygen’ .
Posted in gear, planning
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I’m very quickly stating to learning that with additional strength, comes additional risk. Before I started taking my training a bit more seriously i would just go out and run, without so much as a second thought. Yes i’d be pretty slow, but i’d also be pretty injury free. However, now i’m training harder and running faster, I’m picking up injuries far more easily and far more frequently. In the about 10 weeks i’ll have lost about 5 weeks to hamstring injuries (1 on either leg). I’m have to think harder about warming up and cooling down and having to learn how to feel an injury coming on, so that i can ease off and avoid it.
The week leading up to the injury was going pretty well with a new personal best for a 7 mile run around the river, and a quite fast run into the office 2 days later, but then disaster struck on a slow jog home from work. Fortunately now that i know what a hamstring stain feels like, I stopped straight away and walk the rest of the way home, and it doesn’t feel as bad as last time, so with some luck i’ll have recovered in time for the Borrowdale fell race, my big test of how i’m handling hills before heading to India.
Andrew McBride’s kind donation on just giving this morning has officially kicked off my fundraising effort. It also goes to show the power of social networking… I went to school with Andy a good 25 years ago and haven’t seen him since, but we are friends on Facebook and have the occasional online chat, and when i posted to say that I was going to run 100 miles in the himilaya’s he generously logged onto the justgiving page and made a donation. That donation, and most of the giftaid (a tiny proportion of the giftaid is taken in commision by justgiving to cover the transaction costs) will be paid directy to the charity, and will be used to fund their groundbreaking research focussed on the detection, prediction, treatment and care of gynaecological cancers.
This week, I ran in the first running of the Haltwhistle Marathon a 27 mile trail race taking in stunning Northumbrian scenery including sections of the Roman wall and along the River Tyne. It started last year as a walking challenge with some runners, but this year the route was altered a little to make it a full marathon.
The weather was kind, the company great, running much of the way with Phil Green and Peter Scott, and I came in in 10th place out of a field of 40 runners in 4 hours 19 minutes, a major improvement on my normal performance.
Unfortunately however when I got up on sunday morning, it became apparent that what i’d thought was cramp in my left leg that kicked in at the 6 mile mark and i carried around the rest of the route was indeed a pretty major strain of my hamstring.
Up until know I have been very lucky with injuries, but it would seem with increased training and increased speed also come increased injuries. So for the next week at least i’m on a schedule of ice packs, leg elevatin and rest…
Sadly, I received word today that the 7 tribes race is definitely off. Apparently in order to cover the administrative costs of the race a minimum of 25 people had to sign up by this stage, but as of today they only have 11 people.
Having already put in quite a lot of training and telling everyone we knew i was going to do a multi-stage ultra for charity, the search was on for another race.
Lucinda has been a star and spent all week on the internet. After several dead ends she’s managed to find a 100 mile stage race in Himalayan India. The race starting on the October 23rd, includes the mount ‘everest marathon’ on the 3rd day.
This is quite a different challenge that the seven tribes, its further, it involves more hills and its at altitude, and its colder. Its also only 25 weeks away.
Posted in planning, racing
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With only 30 weeks to go until I head out to the desert, I thought it was about time to gearing up.
I increased my milage to 66 miles this week, by far the furtherest i’ve ran so far.
I picking up a pair of the new inov8 super light weight X-talons. Obvious to get the weight down to around 212 grams a pair, they have had to cut down on pretty much everything the laces, the padding on the uppers, and the soles, but they’ve managed to keep almost the same level of studs at the mudclaws, and they are remarkably comfortable. I tried them out on sand at the beach, and on a variety of grades of rock and trail and even on longer runs they held up well.
I also went for an OMM 12l back pack with a 500ml bottle with strap holster and a 8l chest pack all of which is super light weight, giving me space for a 2.5l water container. My last purchase of the week was a white cold gear underarmour long sleeve crew neck.
I look my first run in the underarmour last night, just a 7.5 mile around the river, it felt really strange to run in, not only did it compress the muscles in my arms etc, but also my chest so i had to work harder to exhale, but then it compressed on the inhales, i’m still not sure if i liked it, but it did force me to think more about breathing and resulted in a pb for that run and a reduced average heart rate.
I heard about parkruns a few months ago, but hadn’t had a chance to get to one until this week. They are a weekly 5k run, ran in parks around the Uk. They are free to enter, you simply sign up, on the parkrun website, print off your barcode and turn up ready to run.
5k is a little shorter that I would normally run, being more of a distance runner, but i surprised myself by running a 21:55. There was pretty mixed field with a few really fast runners and a few beginners, but i was pretty with the time for a first 5k.
I also set a PB for my 12 mile run home this week at 1.43 shaving a mere few seconds of my previous time, but a pb is a pb even if only by a few seconds. This pushed the total mileage for April, up to a total of 192 miles.
In many ways I had expected to be running further, with the amount of training i’ve been doing, but I hadn’t expected to be improving my speed as well.
Posted in racing, training
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