can't trace time...

Over the last couple of years, my MS has been steadily getting worse.

Every time I sit down to write about this, I always seems to fall into a kind of relentless optimism. Perhaps this is a defence mechanism, but I think it's actually how I feel most of the time. As I've said many times before, I honestly don't see the point in wasting my time and my emotional energy railing against something that I'm not going to be able to change. It is what it is. No one knows where this is going, and sitting down and crying about it simply isn't going to achieve anything.

Of course, that's not to say that I sometimes don't feel like crying about it...

On my last visit to the neurologist, I was told that I was a shining example of acceptance of my diagnosis. I think this is because I acknowledge that I have multiple sclerosis and that my disease is progressing, but I try not to let this get in the way of going about my business the best I can.

I suppose this is best illustrated in my running. I ran a bit before my diagnosis, but for whatever reason, started taking it a lot more seriously afterwards. I've run six marathons and countless other events since. My MS has weakened my left side and my left ankle is slowly losing its flexibility. This makes running harder, but thanks to the support of my MS team, I have been able to keep running using a series of different strategies, insoles and orthotic devices. The most recent of these is a pretty snazzy piece of kit that adds some spring-back into my ankle and seems to have stopped me from falling over.

Before this, I was falling over so often whilst running that I was beginning to cause myself some real damage. This brace works well enough that I've been able to go out running without wearing the wrist guards and kneepads.

 Even so, I'm basically fighting a losing battle. 

A consulant surgeon who specialises in sport (and who is a runner himself) told me about ten years ago that it probably wouldn't be my MS that ultimately stopped me from running; it was likely to be as a result of some of the compromises my body was being forced to make to compensate for weakness elsewhere. It seems that is likely to be the case for me. As well as the creeping stiffness in my ankle and the muscles of my leg, I'm told that the weakness in my left hip now means that my running gait has changed. Apparently, instead of driving my left leg through my running stride normally, I now "throw" it in front of myself because I lack the fine muscle control required. 

Running is hard and has got a lot harder over the last couple of years. My last marathon was in April 2019, and it now feels unrealistic to think that I could put my body through that kind of a distance, never mind the hundreds of miles of training. Perhaps more importantly, I'm not sure I have the kind of determination you need. Instead, I've found a joy in just being out and running at all. I can't run as far or as fast as I did before. Usually, at this time of the year, I'd be out with my club taking part in a local series of cross country runs. I've never been very quick, but they're very inclusive events and they are a lot of fun to run. There's a certain joy, I've discovered, in the mud and the hills. This year, I've sat them out. I just don't think it's realistic to put my body through that kind of stress and I'm just not confident that I'm strong enough to pick up my left leg over that kind of terrain for a 10km race.

All these things make me feel a bit sad, but I'm also determined to continue to focus on what I can do, rather than to dwell too much on the things I might have lost. 

I suppose this is what my neurologist means by acceptance.

He also told me that my MS progression was quite unusual: it is not at all normal for patients this far after their diagnosis to be as fit and healthy as I am (my first symptoms were in 2005 and my diagnosis was in 2009). This is obviously good, but it's also a bit depressing. Yes, I've been lucky, but I suddenly have a real sense that the sand is running out of my timer.

Over the last two years, my condition has progressed. I haven't really developed any new symptoms, but the symptoms I do have are getting worse and are affecting me much more in my daily life. I take drugs to help manage my bladder urges and I self-catheterise every night. I also take muscle relaxants to try and control the muscle spasms in my legs that have woken me up at night for a little while, but are now starting to affect the way that I walk and even make it hard for me to sit still in the evening. I walk stiffly and can feel that I swing my legs from the hip as I walk because I tire easily and don't have the strength to drive them through normally. I wouldn't be all that surprised if I needed to walk with a stick at some point in the relatively near future (I actually find walking a lot harder than running).

I am relentlessly positive about these changes, but that doesn't mean that they aren't on my mind. I am really disciplined about not allowing myself to wallow in where this journey might end. No one knows the answer to that one, whether they have MS or not. But.... it does make me a little bit sad.

I reckon I'm pretty strong and resilient, on the whole and maybe I am a shining example of disease acceptance...but these changes are still a lot to take in. 

Well, I'm doing my best.

a vine that can strangle life from a tree...

I’ve never really been particularly sporty. I quite enjoyed playing team sports when I was at school, but there was never any sign of great talent. I wasn’t being picked last for our playground games of football, but I definitely wasn’t being picked first either. Running, however, I loathed. Every week, I think on a Tuesday or Wednesday, we would be sent out on a cross country run. Whatever the weather, we would run three or four miles across muddy fields and along the footpaths out around the school. I say run, but really, as long as I was fairly sure that there was no one looking, I would walk. I absolutely hated slogging my way through the mud and wanted no part of it. It would have been over more quickly if I’d run, but it all just seemed too difficult and too painful. Far better to trudge along miserably in the rain. If I thought I could have got away with hiding in a bush just out of sight, I probably would have done it. The idea that anyone might do this sort of thing for fun just seemed utterly ridiculous. 

Fast forward thirty years, and now it’s the idea that I might have to stop running that really scares me. I sort of fell into running when I stopped playing organised sport and started drinking beer. Popping out once a week for a rather laboured jog was a purely defensive measure designed to stave off an incipient beer belly. 

I didn’t actually start running more seriously until I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009. My journey towards that diagnosis began one morning in July 2005, when I woke up with a numb hand. Over the course of the next few weeks, that numbness spread through my body and down through my legs and feet. Running when you can’t really feel your feet is an unnerving experience: you feel with every stride that you might miss your step and break a leg. I thought then that I might have to give up running, but it’s amazing how adaptable the brain is and how quickly you can get used to something that seemed insurmountable. 

As well as a loss of sensation, one of the most common symptoms of MS is fatigue. It sounds counterintuitive, but I discovered that going for a run was incredibly helpful at helping to shake off this fatigue. When you’ve been running, at least you know why you’re tired. Running made me feel better about myself. MS is a chronic illness with no cure and with uncertain outcomes, but running gave me a sense of control. Visiting an MS clinic at the hospital is a sobering experience; to be surrounded by people in wheelchairs, struggling to speak or to swallow is to be confronted by a possible future. I can’t predict or control how my MS might affect me, but I found that to be a powerful motivation to work my body whilst I can. I joined a running group and began to run with other people. I still wasn’t particularly quick, but it’s funny how running with other people makes you run faster than you thought might be possible. 

MS affects everyone differently. In my case, as well as the numbness and pins & needles, I have a loss of strength on my left-hand-side and a loss of dorsiflexion in my left ankle. This didn’t stop me from running, but as I quickly learned as I began to run more often, this changed my gait and made me more susceptible to injury as my body tried to compensate for the loss of strength and power. The further I run, the more I drop my left side and the more susceptible I am to falling over. A sports specialist consultant surgeon told me that I would probably struggle to run much more than 10km and that, although it might not be my MS that stopped me from running, the compromises my body was making probably would. Naturally, I ignored him and kept running. 

In 2015, I ran my first marathon. 

To be honest, the 26.2 miles itself wasn’t my biggest concern: I was worried how my body would hold up to the 500 miles of training and the load of running 5 or 6 times a week. I didn’t set the world on fire, but running side-by-side with my wife, we made it round and raised a pile of cash for the MS Trust (we’ve raised around £40,000 in total, an amount that mainly humbles me because of the support and generosity of our friends). 

Since that day, I’ve run another 5 marathons. At Chester in 2018, I even dipped below the magical 4 hour mark (a 22 minute PB!). I’ve joined an athletics club, picked up my coaching qualifications and taken enormous pride in the achievements of the athletes I coach as they have worked their way from a couch to 5km programme to running competitive cross-country races and half marathons. 

Meanwhile, slowly and remorselessly, my MS has got worse. My legs and left ankle have slowly stiffened; I take a muscle relaxant at night to help me to sleep and I now fall over so often that I run wearing knee pads and wrist guards; my pace has slowed and my shuffling, uneven gait is causing me problems elsewhere in my body (as that specialist predicted). Stopping, you might think, may be the obvious thing to do. 

I’m not going to stop. 

Running is part of who I am. My friends are runners. Running is something that I do together with my wife. It’s vital for my mental wellbeing every bit as much as my physical wellbeing. I’m not just going to stop. 

Sure, I wish I was faster. What runner doesn’t? 

I wish I didn’t fall over so much, but really, what choice do I have? 

Do I want to stop and feel sorry for myself and the things that I’ve lost, or do I want to keep on going as best as I’m able? Is that really even a question? Precisely because it’s become harder for me, I am more aware now than I have ever been of exactly how much running means to me and I cherish every single time I get out. It’s not the falling over that’s the most important thing to consider, it’s the getting back up again. 

I have a tattoo on my weaker left ankle by the Japanese novelist and marathon runner, Haruki Murakami: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. 

The full quote, from “What I think about when I think about running” is: 

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.” 

This runner can stand the pain and isn’t done quite yet.

marching on...

Long time readers will likely know a couple of things about me:

1) I like to run

2) I have been very lucky with my MS to be able to continue running.

I try not to take it for granted. I actually only really began taking my running seriously after my diagnosis. I think there was something in my head that made me more determined than ever to stay active. Multiple sclerosis is not something that I can really control; I can't change the way that my legs feel or the other ways that the condition is affecting me, but I do have some degree of control over my own determination to get out and to exercise. 

My first marathon was in 2015, and I've run six in total. My high watermark of this madness was between April 2018 and April 2019. In that time, I ran four marathons. At the beginning of October 2018, I ran the Chester marathon in a time of 3:58... that was a PB of something like 22 minutes. My last marathon was a glorious day spent accompanying my wife to a personal best at the Vienna marathon in April 2019. We got married in the city in 2007 and have some wonderful friends there, so it was a joy from start to finish. I haven't retired from running marathons and half intended to get one booked for 2020, but.... well, lockdown happened.

Actually, more than lockdown happened. MS seems to have taken more of a grip on me over the last few months. Since my symptoms first appeared in 2005, I've always had a certain level of loss of sensation/pins and needles in my legs and feet. It does feel weird to run on legs like that, but it's amazing what the brain gets used to. Over the years, I've increasingly had problems with cramp in my legs. Initially this was in my calves, but it's slowly spread so that I was getting muscle spasms in my thighs. There's also a fair amount of stiffness. I've been accustomed to staggering around a bit like an old man when I've been sitting at my desk for a while, but now this seems to be happening more and more often. After resisting for many years, I now take a very small dose of baclofen (a muscle relaxant) before I go to bed. I may need to start taking a higher dose soon.

I'm falling over a lot more too. The loss of flexibility in my left ankle and strength in my left side has always made me a bit prone to this. I drop my left side as I get tired and start scuffing my left foot, which leads to stumbles. This is happening more and more often, meaning that I now go out running wearing knee and wrist guards (my knees have taken a frightful pounding from this and are now sore most of the time). 

I could stop running, but I don't want to. In fact, although I might be running more slowly at the moment, I'm actually doing more miles in lockdown than I think I've ever done before. I managed about 1220 miles in 2019 and I've done 1382 so far this year with 7 weeks still to go. I'll probably go comfortably over 1500 miles for the year. I'm still capable of running more quickly, but my default pace now seems to be a rather sorry plod because I don't really trust my legs any more.

I'm not telling you any of this looking for sympathy. It's just that I'm starting to acknowledge something that I've tried to ignore for more than a decade now: my MS is progressing. The official shift in my diagnosis from relapsing-remitting to secondary progressive a few weeks ago was recognition of that simple fact.

My own sense of self and wellbeing is bound up in my ability to run. For better or for worse. I'm going to keep running. Of course I'm going to keep running. I'm just slowly starting the process of coming to terms with the fact that I'm not bulletproof and that I can't control the progress of this godawful condition.

 You adapt, though. What other choice do you have? I'll always have that 3:58 marathon, eh?

if I surround myself with positive things...

It was World MS Day on Saturday.

I woke up at about 03:30 to find my whole lower body in spasm. from the muscles of my lower stomach down through my legs to my feet. I've been getting cramps in my legs for some time, but this is different, it's not a sudden clenching of the muscles but something that lasts for longer. It's not as intensely painful, but it is uncomfortable and has a halo effect that lingers in the muscles for some hours afterwards, as a deep-set stiffness in the muscles.

As I often do when this happens, I got up and walked very stiffly to the bathroom. This is partly to ease the muscles off, but also I'm now pretty entrenched in the habit of emptying my unreliable bladder when it is convenient. I catheterise myself every night before bed to ensure I sleep with a completely empty bladder and take a drug every day to help resist bladder urge, but as I was awake it was a way to kill two birds with one stone. It was already pretty light outside and the dawn chorus was really starting to get underway. It was really quite a lovely.

That done, I staggered back to the bedroom to try to get some more sleep, popping an ibuprofen along the way in the hopes of waking up with a bit less muscle pain.

This is my new routine.

We already know that the problems with my bladder are related to my MS: my brain isn't able to reliably empty my bladder completely, and I will often get the urge to pee even if I've only just been, whether my bladder is empty or not. It's likely that the muscle spasms in my lower body are MS-related too. There are drugs you can take to chemically relax these muscles and to try and get a good night's sleep, but I'm reluctant to take them. 

After all, I'm a runner.

Running keeps me sane. This was true before the lockdown, and it's doubly true now. My ability to get out of the house and clear my head on a run is precious to me. I'm probably getting slower as I get older, but the speed I run is not nearly as important to me as my ability to run at all. As things stand, I don't want to compromise the ability of my legs to carry me and so, if the spasms are the price I need to pay if I want to keep running... well, then it's a cost I'm prepared to pay.

Mind you, I have been doing quite a lot of running recently: I covered 145 miles in May, almost all of it side-by-side with my wife, who hasn't run as far in a month, even when she was training for her marathons. Quite a lot of this mileage has been slow, on stiff legs. Where the speed of my wife used to be our limiting factor, these days, it's more likely that she's waiting for me. It's not that I can't run fast any more - I'm doing at least one set of intervals a week where I try to let the brakes off - it's just that I'm really just happy to be moving at all; delighted just to get out of the house in this beautiful weather and to enjoy the fresh air and the flourishing spring around us.

On Saturday, after another couple of hours of sleep, I got up and went out for a 5km run. It wasn't fast and it wasn't pretty, but I like to think that it helped to stretch some of that stiffness out of my legs. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it definitely made me feel better.

I was diagnosed with MS in 2009 after 4 years of symptoms. It's an incurable condition with uncertain outcomes, so it's a frightening thing to be labelled with. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, but I do firmly believe that MS only has as much control of your life as you allow it.

As this film from World MS day a few years ago shows beautifully, a diagnosis with multiple sclerosis does not have to mean the end. Life is what you make of it, and other cliches.



I think I'm much stronger and kinder now than I was in 2009, and I thank MS for that.

numbers and figures....

Unlike lots of runners, I'm not really into stats. I do have a Strava account, I do track every run and I do have a general awareness of my pace, but I'm not one of those people who goes out and tries to take segment crowns and that kind of thing. Never have been. Good luck to people who are motivated by that kind of thing, but I'm just not.

The only person I'm competing with is myself.

I fight a constant battle with myself to stop feeling as though I'm slow and getting slower. I do run a lot of my miles at a relatively sedate pace, much of it with my wife.... but I enjoy those miles, and quite often these days it's me holding her back because her natural pace is sort of between gears for me and it's easier to just run a little slower. I also know, deep down, that it's true that I can run a lot faster than that when I want to, and I have done as recently as last year in the races I do for my club. Hell, I do intervals once or twice a week and I do it then too. It's nice to throw off the shackles occasionally, to not worry about my spasming legs or my stiff ankle or my creaky knee and to just run as fast as I've ever run before. My 10k PB was about this time last year, and it should have been a couple of minutes quicker again, but I got stuck on a narrow path at the start because I'd started too far down the field and got caught behind runners I should have started in ahead of.

Ah, this stuff is boring, I know.  I don't blog for months, and when I do come back with something, it's just a load of crap about running. I'm sorry/not sorry about that. Running has played a huge part in helping me to keep my mental health on an even keel over the years, but of course it's even more important now that everything else has gone on hold. The ability to go outside for a run once a day is absolutely priceless to me and I'm so grateful that I've been able to make the most of it and that I live so close to the river and some nice, spacious running routes.

I was looking at the graphs above and thinking about my running journey. I started tracking my runs in about 2011/12, at about the same time as I started taking running more seriously. I joined Sweatshop Running Community about then and started going out more regularly than just one short run a week. Running with other people seemed to really make me work harder and run faster too. Three years ago, I joined an England Athletics registered running club and started wearing a club vest and running in actual, sanctioned races.  All of this, of course, after my 2009 diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.

Never mind the fact that I've now tracked nearly 7500 miles worth of running, just look at those graphs. The one on the left shows a track of my monthly mileage - those spikes are the peaks of training immediately before marathons, of course. Most interesting is that graph on the right, showing a rolling tally of mileage over 365 days. You can really see that sharp climb up to that first marathon in 2015, but what interests me is what happens next: there's a dip in 2018 -- ironically, running 4 marathons in a 12 month period means that I actually did less mileage over the year because there are 4 months where I'm doing very little as a taper towards race day.. but after that dip, my mileage has steadily increased to track at around 1220 miles for the last 365 days. 481 miles so far this calendar year.

So sure, I've got problems with my legs and ankle and I'm maybe running a lot of that mileage more slowly than perhaps I might like.... but I'm doing okay, considering.

Like I said, I'm not really into stats.

What's keeping you sane?

Danger! High Voltage!

I had a consultation with the neuro-rehabilitation unit at a local hospital towards the end of last year. I was seen by a specialist registrar, senior neuro-physiotherapist and a senior orthotist. Quite the collection of experts. They've just copied me in on the report.

Two things caught my eye:

1) "On examination, this gentleman is tall at 6' 5"" -- note how many experts it took to notice this particular detail.

2) "We believe that running marathons and training to run the marathons might exacerbate some of his symptoms." -- Oh dear. Luckily, they weren't finished there -- "Therefore, our physiotherapist advised him to alternate different modes of exercise between running marathons".

This isn't really news to me. At least they're not daft enough to suggest that I stop running altogether.

I always used to swim a couple of times a week, but when I started running marathons in 2015, everything else kind of fell by the wayside. I've also done a particularly large amount of long mileage runs over the last 18 months as I completed 4 marathons between April 2018 and April 2019. That would probably put a strain on anyone's body, never mind one with bio-mechanical issues brought on my a loss of strength on one side.

Since the Vienna marathon in April last year, my monthly mileage has actually probably gone up a bit. Two other things have changed though: I'm not doing the really long training runs you need in order to train for a marathon; I"m also running a lot of my miles more slowly, either with the group that I coach, or with my wife. This is reducing the amount of strain I"m putting on my body.

I'm not saying that I'm never going to run another marathon. After dipping under 4 hours at Chester in 2018 it's true that my desire to run 26.2 miles faster has all but disappeared. Am I interested in putting in the work to shave a few minutes off that time? Not really. 3.45 doesn't sound much better than 3.58 to me. Especially when you consider how much work would go into finding that extra few minutes. So, I'm not interested in going faster, but I am perhaps still interested in running a marathon with my wife again.... Vienna in April 2019 was a joy from start to finish. I don't have anything planned this year, but I am doing a 15.6 mile trail race tomorrow at Belvoir, so we'll see.

One other output from that consultation with the neuro-rehabilitation unit in November was an appointment with the FES team in Derby, which I attended this week. For an hour or so, I had a device attached to my left leg that fires electric pulses down the leg to stimulate the flex in my ankle. It feels a bit like a TENS machine (if you remember them), and it looks like I might be able to borrow a unit for 6 weeks or so to see if it makes any difference to my running. In all honesty, this kind of device is generally used to help people who are essentially immobile to walk again, so it feels a bit gratuitous to strap it onto someone who is still capable of running a marathon... but we'll see. They seem interested to find out how it helps a runner. Watch this space.

223 miles of running so far this year with another 15 or so to come tomorrow before February is out. I ain't doing so bad.

slow down...

Let's not make any bones about it: I've been lucky with my MS.

Sure, I have some problems: numbness, pins & needles, muscle weakness and wastage, spasms, bladder issues, fatigue... but when it comes right down to it, I've run 6 marathons since I was diagnosed in 2009 and I still go out running 5 or 6 times a week. In the grand scheme of things, my problems are small.

Just recently though, things have been getting a bit worse and are really starting to affect my running. I was warned years ago that this day might be coming: a consultant specialising in sports medicine told me nearly ten years ago that it probably wouldn't be my MS that stopped me running directly, but it would probably be something caused by my MS. This doctor was a runner too, and he'd recently had to stop running because of back surgery, so he was quick to spot how important running was to me and quick to realise how critical it was to keep me on the road. He understood. To be fair, he also said that I would probably never run more than 10km again, so he clearly didn't know everything.

Perhaps he was just a few years early with his prediction.

I've been steadily losing flexibility in my left ankle for a while now but it's become quite stiff over the last couple of months and the achilles is very tender; I've had stiffness and numbness in my legs almost since the very beginning, but it's now taking me a mile or two to shake it off and get into my running stride; the muscle loss in my left side has been apparent for a while now, but I'm now getting niggles across my core and on my right side as my body tried to compensate.

I ran four marathons between April 2018 and April 2019. I'm still running around 25 miles per week and have run just short of 1000 miles in the calendar year to date. It feels ridiculous to complain because I've sat in enough MS clinics to know what this disease can do and how lucky I've been.

... but still, it is upsetting. I was hoping to run another marathon in spring 2020, but at the moment, even a half marathon feels like a bit of a stretch goal. We're almost exactly 12 months since I ran a half marathon PB (at Tissington) and a marathon PB (at Chester) in successive weeks.  It feels so frustrating to find my mileage restricted by a failing body.

Still, although it's frustrating, I hope I'm wise enough to realise that slowing down a little isn't the end of the world (even if it might feel like it is). That doctor was right: running 10km slowly is a lot better than not running at all.

Dangnabbit.

A runner just wants to run.

big wheel keeps on turning...

I was at the physio yesterday.

I ran four marathons last year and I've run 782 miles so far this year. Given that I have a chronic, incurable neurological condition, I suppose that it was only really ever going to be a matter of time before I needed a bit of maintenance.

I'm currently seeing various specialists about various ailments, but my visit yesterday was to consult with an expert about a sore achilles tendon on my left side.  I tend to have a rolling list of things that bother me when I run, and this sore tendon has worked its way up to the top of the list over the last few months, overtaking a stiff ankle and finally moving its way past my previous number one concern of very sore internal oblique muscles. Yeah, it's a laugh a minute keeping this show on the road, let me tell you. I was hoping that I'd be able to get some easy answers and some quick treatment to push this back down the list.  Sadly, this isn't quite how the session worked out.

You will not be in the least bit surprised to know that all of these complaints are apparently connected. As I sat down to talk through my reason for booking the session, the physio looked at the side of my left knee and pointed out that my tendon there looked like it was substantially wasted. Indeed, when I looked, you can see a hollow developing where it used to be. He also admired the fact that there was noticeably less muscle on my left hand side compared to my right and moved down to examine my ankle.  Oh, look at this.... you've got almost no strength here compared to the other side and your tendons have got about twice as much slackness as they're meant to, meaning that I have very little control at all over the lateral movement of my foot, which is why I fall over a lot as I lose control of my foot and my ankle rolls.

He's shown me a load of exercises to do to try to build up the strength of my left ankle, but I left feeling a little down about the whole thing. A sports specialist told me ten years ago that it wasn't likely to be the MS that stopped me running, but that it was probably going to be some underlying, secondary issue caused by the MS. This looks like the way it's going to be.

I'm a stubborn old bastard and it will take a lot to take me off the road... but it's always sobering to have your own physical decline spelled out to you. No matter how much I like to pretend otherwise, I'm not entirely like other runners and my performance isn't linked to how hard I train or how much I want it.

I've got an appointment at the musculoskeletal clinic next week. I'm hoping that I'll get some proper bio-mechanical assessment done to see if there's anything more that can be done to help keep me out and running... be that orthotics or whatever. In the meantime.... I've got a 10km club trail race tomorrow to keep me busy and to both take my mind off and to focus it intently on my physical shortcomings.

he just stares at the world, planning his vengeance....

Within my own personal social media echo-chamber, I follow a number of MS-related pages and blogs: some of the main charities, but also a few interesting individuals too (hi Steve!). At their best, they are an excellent way to keep up to speed with the latest news and developments,  but they're also a good way of getting some basic, nuts-and-bolts factual information about multiple sclerosis. Of course, as with any other form of social media, you have to wade through huge amounts of memes and other unsubstantiated nonsense from the great unwashed to get to the good stuff.  If you haven't got a finely tuned bullshit filter up and running by now, then you should probably just stay well away from the internet for your own safety.  Still, if you do have the patience and a modicum of critical appreciation, then you can pretty quickly find the nuggets of gold of helpful information and a support network of organisations and individuals ready and willing to offer you support. If you know what you're looking for, then you really don't have to go through this alone. This is one of the things that the MS Trust is fantastic at... providing unbiased information and support to people with MS or going through the process of diagnosis.

There is an awful lot of old toss out there, though.  My own personal bugbear are the pity parties, the people who use these forums as a way of wallowing in their own world of personal pain. There's one guy on the MS Trust pages who posts a different "no one understands my suffering so don't judge what you don't understand" memes every single day. Every. Single. Day.  He must have a folder on his desktop where he saves them down when he finds them from his google alerts so he can quickly publish them every morning. I suppose he's looking for validation and a bit of human engagement, and he gets it in spades.  Every post is re-shared and filled with comments from people saying "so true, so true".  Look.  I get it, I really do.  MS is one of those conditions where people can get isolated and where increasing levels of disability must make the temptation to mourn what you've lost impossible to resist. It's also easy for me to judge when I'm able to run marathons.

But that's the thing, isn't it? I can run marathons, but that doesn't mean that I haven't suffered as a result of my multiple sclerosis. I ran before my symptoms and diagnosis, but I had only done one or two half marathons. I had no idea that running was going to form such a central pillar to my life, nor that my body was going to be robust enough to stand finishing 6 marathons (to date), including one that dipped under the 4 hour mark. These things seemed impossible to me before my diagnosis, but that diagnosis somehow gave me a strength and determination to try these things and not just to lie down and be beaten.  I'd like to think that, even if I couldn't run marathons, or if something happens that means I can no longer run that far, then I'll find something else to focus on instead. 

Starting with parkrun, I've discovered a joy in volunteering. Now, as well as happily volunteering most Saturdays, I also give up my time to coach as Couch to 5k programme at my running club, and when the first batch graduated, I started coaching an Improvers group too. I've got enormous satisfaction from watching these guys go from C25k to pulling on their club vests and racing 10km races for their club.  My point is that something made these guys get up off the couch and to start running. If they're anything like me, they have a little voice in their head that is constantly questioning what the hell they think they're doing running around a track with all these excellent runners; that they don't belong and that they look ridiculous. Like me, they've faced that fear and done it anyway, and now there's no stopping them. It would have been a lot easier to stay on the sofa and say that they couldn't possibly ever do these things, but instead they've taken the harder path and faced down their fears. 

MS is similar, at least in my experience.  Sure, not everyone is going to be able to run, but there's always going to be something else you can do to stop yourself wallowing in your own suffering.  Or, even worse, projecting that suffering at other people.

The other day, someone on the MS Trust Facebook page published a link to a story on the BBC website about someone with MS who completed an Ironman triathlon.

Conor Devine - the Ironman with MS

Here's the comment she put up to accompany the link:

"This is fab for him, but makes me angry. I am just going to sit here and try really really hard to overcome optical neuritis or trigeminal neuralgia for all of us. I am so pleased he can do this, but I (we) can not go out and improve our mobility more than we can. This implies to the world that we could be well if only we tried. Pleased for all of you who can do any degree of activity to keep you fit, some can’t. If it had just said that"

Someone else felt the need to add, 'Great now the dwp will think we can all do this'

Now, the BBC could definitely have done a better job in that piece of making it clear that MS has a variety of possible outcomes, and that completing an Ironman probably puts you at one extreme end of the scale.... but I find it so difficult to stomach the wilful tunnel vision displayed by this kind of attitude, an apparent inability to share in someone else's successes and a determination to wallow in their own limitations.  I once received a comment (here or elsewhere) from someone else with MS saying something along the lines of "There's always someone like you, climbing a mountain or running a marathon when I can't even run for the bus". Why can't we just revel in these successes? Where's your generosity of spirit?  Someone else's success doesn't reflect on your own failures, does it? Why try to limit your expectations to a world of what you can't do and not think upwards towards what you might be able to achieve instead?

It's a cliche, but you really don't know what you might be able to achieve until you try. Sure, you might not be climbing a mountain or running a marathon, but who knows what you might be able to achieve instead?

I'm doing my training with Guide Dogs tomorrow, so I'm about to embark on another chapter in my volunteering. It would be a lot easier to do nothing and to stay at home instead, worrying about the progression of my MS and how no-one understands my invisible pain, but I'm trying to do something useful with my life instead.

I'm not dead yet.

uptight, out of sight...

Like most kids who grew up in the 1970s and early 80s, I have vivid memories of a gentleman by the name of Joey Deacon. Joey suffered from cerebral palsy, and in 1981, the International Year of the Disabled, he was the focus of a feature on the children’s TV programme, Blue Peter as an example of someone who had achieved a lot with his life in spite of his disabilities. Of course, kids being kids, the term “Joey” and the phrase “Spaz” immediately became shorthand for someone who was stupid… so much so that the Spastic Society changed their name to “Scope” (which obviously led to kids adopting “Scope” as their new insult for a stupid person).

I’ve had cause to think about spasticity quite a lot recently. Although I’ve been pretty lucky with my multiple sclerosis, one of my most persistent symptoms has been stiffness and cramping in the muscles of my legs. I’ve actually had a physio film my calf muscles as he couldn’t quite believe how much the muscles seemed to pulse and ripple of their own accord. The rippling itself seems fairly benign, but I also get night cramps in my legs, quite often waking up on agony. Mostly, this is confined to my lower leg, but the stiffness and the occasional twitch has spread up into my thighs, much to the irritation of the cat when she’s trying to get comfortable. I’ve been diagnosed some baclofen to help combat these cramps and twitches and the muscle stiffness, but as a runner, I’m a little bit wary about taking any sort of muscle relaxant: it might help me sleep, but what about the impact on my muscles when I don’t want them to be relaxed? Perhaps the acid test for me at the moment is that I’d rather put up with the cramps and the stiffness than risk anything which might have a knock-on affect on my running.

My MS is technically classified as relapsing-remitting, but I couldn’t honestly tell you of a single defined relapse. Instead, I seem to have a set of symptoms that seem to be fairly steady but slightly on a downward trajectory. By running two full marathons in a thirty day period, as well as the hundreds of miles of training, I know that I’ve asked my body to do a lot this year. It probably wouldn’t be all that surprising if the increased spasticity in my legs that has me staggering around like an old man whenever I get up from my desk at work is related to that. That’s quite a lot for anyone, never mind someone who suffers from multiple sclerosis and I need to be mindful that my body needs to rest, no matter how much I want to be out there flogging it. If my body wants to let me know the consequences of what I’ve done, then that’s probably fair enough. That said, I’m actually considering entering another marathon in October, so now is very much the time when I have a window of opportunity to rest up a bit before my training starts up again in earnest…. I’m hoping that the muscle stiffness is going to ease off, but let’s be honest: I’m not going to let it stop me one way or another until I can’t even manage a shuffle.

Meanwhile, I’ll just keep reminding myself how lucky I am when I feel like cursing my stupid, failing body.

roll with the punches...

I seem to have lost my ability to jump.

How did I discover this?  Because it was jumps night up at the track.

I now spend my Tuesday evenings helping coach the kids up at the track with my running club.  Mostly, it's crowd management and trying to use the hour we have to wear them out before we hand them back to their parents.... but we also try and introduce them to the rudiments of the various athletic disciplines.  Yesterday was jumps. 

As well as introducing the kids to the delights of the long jump pit, we did some standing jumping.  As pictured above, that's putting both feet together, jump up onto the top of the mat, jump down... repeat with bigger and bigger mats.  Sounds easy, right?

Well, the kids certainly made it look easy.  Some of them could jump up to almost their own height.  Pretty impressive.

Me?  Well, I discovered that my ability to jump up more than about 6 inches has essentially just disappeared.  Maybe this is due to the fact that my body is still a bit battered and sore from running two marathons in the last few weeks (which it most definitely is - it's taking my knees about two miles into a run to warm up at the moment!). Unfortunately, I think it's also probably something to do with my general loss of muscle and flexibility thanks to my MS.

Is standing jumping something that I'm likely to miss?  Not really.  After all, I only noticed I couldn't do it when I was trying something that I probably haven't done at all in the last 35 years.... but even so, it still seems like a tangible marker of something that I used to be able to do that I now can't do. 

As I can run a marathon, perhaps I have no right to grumble, but still...  I like to pretend I haven't been affected by MS much at all, or at least try to ignore it most of the time.

Sometimes though, it just makes its presence felt.

can't trace time....

When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009, I very quickly had to make two very important decisions: did I want to start taking a disease modifying drug (DMD)? If so, which one did I want to take?

Neither of these decisions is particularly easy. You’d imagine that everyone would want to be on a drug as soon as possible, but actually, NOT taking a drug is also a perfectly valid choice. MS is (currently) incurable and none of the drugs on offer can make any claim beyond *maybe* slowing down disease progression, although there will be no way of knowing if it’s doing you any good because everybody’s disease presents differently and advances at different rates. And, of course, they all have side-effects… which range from something as benign as getting a bit of a headache all the way through to developing a brain tumour. Nobody wants a brain tumour, do they? Lots of people actually find that the side-effects they do get are so awful that they would rather roll the dice and take nothing at all than face up to that.

For me, the decision was relatively simple: I would rather take something that might be doing nothing, than to take nothing…which is definitely doing nothing to help. The drug I chose was Avonex, and the reason I chose it was because it was a once-weekly injection into the muscle of my thigh that (at the time) I wouldn’t need to keep in a fridge. Yes, it involved a big needle, but I’m not squeamish and it meant a much lower level of general disruption to my life than some of the other drugs that needed injecting several times a week.

As it turned out, I seemed to tolerate the injections fairly well: a couple of paracetamol and 400mg if Ibuprofen before injecting at bedtime, and I seemed to be able to ride out the worst of any side-effects. Occasionally I’d wake up the morning after feeling completely drained, but I certainly never got any of the flu-like symptoms that many other users reported. I tolerated it well, my blood tests seemed relatively normal (on these sorts of meds, you need your blood monitoring to make sure they’re not doing you any form of mischief elsewhere) and, most importantly of all, my MS didn’t seem to be progressing. Never mind that newer therapies – many of which didn’t involve injections at all – were coming onto the market; why change?

For the last three or four winters, I seem to have become susceptible to chest infections that linger for several months. As a runner, this has been annoying, but it was only when my GP mentioned to me this year that this was something that was likely to happen to me every year now, that I even really began to think that it might be down to something other than bad luck. The drugs used to manage MS essentially work by damping down your immune system in an attempt to stop it going rogue and attacking my own nervous system. Is it really such a leap to imagine that suppressing my immune system might lead to other infections? Well, perhaps that was still a trade-off worth making… but then I started to get swelling and white mottling on my tongue and on the back of my throat. I didn’t have any signs of a bacterial infection and came back negative for fungal infection… was I starting to get an allergic reaction to my medication? One week, my throat swelled up within minutes of my injection, and my MS Nurses just told me to stop [I wrote about that the other week]

Did I mention that the MS Nurses are great? They've offered me front line support since the day I was diagnosed and one of the reasons that we support the MS Trust is because they provide the funding and training that helps the MS Nurses carry out their vital work.  We're running a marathon in April to raise money to support that work, and you can sponsor us here..... the MS Nurses all remember me when I ring because I'm the runner.  This money is needed precisely because it's so unusual to run a marathon with MS.  Most cannot.

Heck, on Saturday I ran 18 miles before breakfast! I was out of the house at 05:45 wearing a head torch!  I know!  And a 5.2 mile club cross-country race through knee-deep muddy water on Sunday!

Anyway.

A month later, my throat is clearing up… but what next? Obviously, it’s not much good taking nothing at all. I’m feeling better, but presumably the same decision I made in 2009 still applies: I’d rather be doing something than doing nothing. But what am I going to take? Well, I spoke to Kate the MS Nurse again today: apparently, although Avonex is one of the older treatments, it is also one that suppresses your immune system the least; all of the others hit you harder. But does that mean that taking them would make me even more prone to infection? Was the infection down to the Avonex suppressing my immune system, or was it something else? I’m told that it’s unlikely that my neurologist would want me to continue with it (only now do I learn that 9 years is a long time to be on Avonex), but it’s not clear where I go from here.

Meanwhile, I wait… and hope that I don’t have a relapse in the meantime.  It's something like this that helps me to remember how lucky I've been in the 9 years since I was diagnosed. I really haven't had any great dramas from my MS and - relatively speaking - I still don't really have a great deal to complain about.

At least I’m not very likely to catch a cold.

Swings and roundabouts.

* UPDATE -- the neurologist wants to see me. My next appointment is in November, so they're seeing if they can get me in over the next couple of weeks. His preference is to keep me on the Avonex as I've responded so well to it over the years, but.... who knows?

caught in a vicious circle....

Hey!  Good news!  I think I've worked out where my never-ending infection is coming from.

Quick recap: over the last few winters, a cold has turned into a lingering chest infection that seems to take months to shake off.  This year was initially no different, and my GP was good enough to pretty much put me straight onto to antibiotics in an attempt to shorten the whole process.  This was, she told me, likely to be my fate every winter as long as I was on immune-supressing drugs. Great.

That's the thing about the disease modifying drugs used to treat MS: they try to slow down the progression of the disease by weakening the ability of my immune system to attack my central nervous system.  It seems to work, but a weakened immune system obviously leaves the door open to any and every passing infection.  What a choice.

This year, the chest infection seemed to develop into something else, a swelling of the throat and tongue with little white nodules.  I was treated for a fungal infection (three times), but it didn't seem to make any difference.  I've been working pretty long hours for the last few months, so perhaps I'm just run down. A couple of weeks off with an 8 day break in the Maldives can't hurt.

It was a lovely break, but it didn't shake off my throat problem.  I thought it had gone, but after my weekly injection, it came back before I even had a chance to think about the 30 degree drop in temperature waiting for me when I returned to the UK. 

By this point, my GP is baffled.  I am fit and healthy with a strong pulse and no obvious signs of infection. My throat and tongue were swabbed for a fungal infection and came back completely normal... and yet, here we are.  This damn thing has been hanging around for months.  It's affecting my voice, so I've had to stop going to choir. It's not especially debilitating and it's no longer in my lungs, but it is certainly BLOODY ANNOYING.  Could it perhaps be something to do with the Avonex I've been injecting every week for the last 8 years?

Hmm.

Now that I thought about it, this confirmed a pattern for me: mouth and throat start to feel like they're getting better, then I inject and it comes back, getting better over the course of the week until I inject again and then the cycle repeats.  I spoke to my MS Nurses - my gateway to the neurology team at the hospital - and they brushed me off, telling me to book a blood test and to wait and see (as if waiting and seeing since September wasn't quite enough waiting and seeing...)

I injected again on Monday night, and literally within an hour, my throat swelled and the white nodules were back all across the back of my mouth.  This is surely not a coincidence. I spoke to the nurses again the next morning.  It appears that 8 years is a long time to be injecting Avonex and my body might be developing some sort of a reaction to it.  The told me to stop injecting immediately and we'll see where we are in a month and if things clear up.

I suppose this is progress.  It's possible that my MS might strike in the period when I'm not covered.... but if it gives my body a chance to finally shake off this bloody infection or reaction or whatever it is, then that's got to be a risk worth taking, hasn't it?

This coming week will be the first time in eight years that I haven't injected myself. I've injected in a camper van in Australia and New Zealand, in a tent in Africa, in Cambodia, in Vietnam, in Canada... all over the world in all sorts of places.  But next week, it stops.

What a palaver.

Meanwhile, as long as this has stayed out of my lungs.... marathon training has continued as normal.  Because, you know...

I-C-E...

As it was a little bit warmer this morning, I wrapped myself up in a few less layers for my bike ride to work.  Although I'm generally a bit nesh and feel the cold, I've actually not been too bad this year... I've been mostly running in shorts and have only worn leggings for my bike ride over the last week when it turned really cold. Maybe I've lost more sensation than I thought.

Still, today felt a bit warmer, so I left a couple of layers at home and set off at about 06:45 as usual.  It's been absolutely gorgeous at this time of the morning recently, and today was no exception: crystal clear skies with a sliver of moon and all the stars on display, with dawn just barely brightening the furthest edges of the eastern horizon.

It might have been a little less cold, but there was also still clearly a pretty hard frost on the ground.  You're pretty vulnerable on a bike at the best of times, but ice is a particular menace: once your wheels start to slide, you're on the ground before you've had a chance to react.  I'm never a particular speedy cyclist, and it sometimes feels like I'm being overtaken by old ladies with baskets on the front of their bicycles.... but on days like this, I cycle even more slowly than usual.

My commute is a little under 4 miles, and it's mostly along cycle paths and away from traffic.  Usually, that's a good thing.  Today? Well, on icy mornings, there's a lot to be said for a gritted road.  Less than a mile into my ride, I cross the river Trent on a pedestrian suspension bridge at the Embankment.  It's has ridged wooden slats on the main span that always seem to catch the frost.  I'm always super careful along here, today that meant riding along at about 1mph.  I still overtook a lady doing about 0.5mph, but both of us were being very cautious in the pre-dawn light.  As I eased down the ramp on the other side, I contemplated my turn left onto the road.  I always take this slowly anyway, because I'm afraid of coming off and shooting out into traffic.  There was no traffic at this time of the day, but I applied my brakes and slowed down even more.  I made it around the corner, but as soon as I applied power to my pedals, my wheels slipped out from under me and I was down.

Apparently, no matter how careful I thought I was being, I clearly wasn't being careful enough.

As I lay on the side of the road deciding how I felt about this with my wheel spinning comically in the air on my bike beside me, my mental inventory of my limbs was interrupted by the lady I'd overtaken asking me if I was okay.  Um, yes.   I think so.  I'd hate to have been travelling any faster, but I seemed to be bruised and grazed, but otherwise alright.  I thanked her again when I cycled past her a couple of minutes later.  Apparently, the council put a man on that slope later on in the morning to warn people about the black ice down there because lots of people had been coming off their bikes (well, they could also try gritting it....that would be cheaper than manning it for a couple of hours, wouldn't it?).  All things considered, I guess I was lucky to escape with a slow-motion tumble and a couple of grazes.

As this happens at least once a year, I keep a roll of plaster in my desk drawer at work for exactly this reason (and it never fails to amaze me that I can have big grazes on my knees and elbows even though the layers on top don't seem damaged at all.  Friction burns, I guess.

Still, given that I've cycled over 1,000 miles to and from work this year, and I think this is my first fall...maybe this was coming.  Some people look out of the window at a frost and decide to get the bus to work.  I do not (because I'm stubborn and stupid, as we all know).  Well, it's a few more interesting scars to add to the pile, if nothing else.

I might walk the bike down that slope tomorrow though, eh?

big guns blew me away

After a month of this damn chest infection, it's fair to say that I've been going a little stir-crazy.  You might think that I'd be able to enjoy a break from running and cycling, but no.... I don't rest well.

My chest X-ray from last week has come back clear, which is great news.  My lungs also apparently now sound clear... but I'm still being bothered by a tight chest and some difficulty breathing.  Not to worry, as well as the two inhalers I'm now using, the doctor prescribed me some steroids.

It's only a short course lasting 5 days, but my imagination is already running wild about the possibility that I'm going to be able to make my return to running cutting much more of a dash in my running vest as I pump my guns on the way to PB after PB.  I may have to start worrying about out-of-competition testing and keeping unadulterated child's piss in my fridge in case the doping police come round unexpectedly and demand a sample... but that's really only a small price to pay for a return to fitness.

After all, the only way to bag a classy lady is to give her two tickets to the gun show [kisses biceps] and see if she likes the goods.

Because that's how steroids work, right?

Wait, what? You're saying that a corticosteroid is entirely different to an anabolic steroid?

Pfff.  But what do you know about it?

shake it off....

One of the drawbacks of injecting immune-suppressors every week is that they suppress your immune system. I never used to get colds at all, but since I began injecting these disease modifying drugs (designed to slow down the progression of my multiple sclerosis) they seem to hit me harder every year.

The sniffles I can manage, but I now seem to usually get a secondary infection in my lungs that lasts for ages as my body lacks the tools to fight it off - it took months to finally shake it off last year. The current infection is about 3-4 weeks in and has completely stopped me running (well, apart from two predictably difficult half marathons and a couple of parkruns that I stubbornly insisted on running).

I've had one course of antibiotics already and just started the next one; I'm using a brown inhaler twice a day and I'm supposed to be using a blue one 4 times a day; I'm also now having a chest x-ray. Good times. The doctor today saw me chafing at the bit to get out running (I've got two half marathons, two 20 mile races and a marathon in the diary to train for, you know!) and warned me to be nice to myself.

Hmm.

That's the hard part.

They say you should never run if a cold descends into your chest, but I'd be interested to hear the views of the people who say this on running when you can't feel your feet and have widespread numbness throughout the muscles of your thighs; or when you've lost 15% of the muscle mass on your left side and a good deal of the flexibility in one ankle.

Let's be honest: if I listened to my body, I'd probably never run at all.

Not that I'm planning on going out for a run.

Before Saturday, anyway.

*** I feel I should say that this post isn't supposed to be a pity party. I sometimes get accused of being overly rosy about MS and presenting a view that applies to very few people. I can, after all, run a marathon. I suppose this means I feel a bit of responsibility to show the other side too. MS can be an invisible condition, and for every time I'm shown as #inspiration, smiling as I finish a marathon or something, I feel I need to be honest about the rest of it too. I know that I'm still relatively very lucky with my MS. I'm not really looking for sympathy because the only thing this infection is stopping me doing is running, and I'm still doing a bit of that. It's frustrating, especially after my 4 week layoff in September, but it's hardly the end of the world.

Incidentally, I also know that my loss of sensation and muscle are nothing at all like running with a chest infection.  I'm just blowing off steam.  Probably best to ignore me, really.

you're slip slidin' away...

At around 1am on Saturday morning, I found myself running around a wooded, hilly trail course in the Derbyshire countryside.  It was pouring with rain and had been for the best part of 12 hours, so the course was a treacherous swamp, with mud burying the many tree roots and stumps that lined the path.  This was my third lap of the 10km course, and I'd had maybe about half an hour of sleep since the night before.  As I ran, I realised that my world had completely collapsed into the narrow beam my head torch was casting around my feet; everything else but what I could see in that little cone of light disappeared.  I was cold, wet and very tired. My balance isn't great, so I was also a little terrified that I was going to take a tumble at almost any moment.

And then it hit me.  I had the dawning realisation that I was actually really enjoying myself.  The conditions might have been awful and the very idea of trying to run under those sort of circumstances might seem utterly ridiculous.... but I felt utterly exhilarated.  Tell me: when do you normally get to experience something like this?

That was Thunder Run 2017.

Since my diagnosis with MS, I've run further and faster than I ever would have thought possible.  I've found a wonderful running community, run loads of races and even completed a couple of marathons, with a couple more on the horizon.  Nothing is quite like a 24 hour relay race.  Thunder Run is pretty simple really: in teams from 1-8 people, you simply have to get as many laps of the 10km course done as you can in the 24 hours between midday on Saturday and midday on Sunday.

Last year, I managed 4 laps (and a parkrun) in sunny, dry conditions in a team of seven.  It was tough, but it was huge fun camping with my running buddies and to do something so completely new to me.  This year, I was in a smaller team of 5 people and the weather quickly meant that every lap was maybe 10 of the longest kilometres I have ever run.  I thought before we started that I was likely to have to do 5 laps, and prepared accordingly by not pushing myself out to parkrun before we started.  As it turned out, although I had the time to get 5 laps done, my body just said no and I decided that discretion was the wiser course.  Oddly, I actually felt stronger on my fourth lap this year than I did last year, with my legs in much better shape, but the overall fatigue - a combination of the conditions and the lack of sleep - meant that I was much more tired overall and decided there would be nothing gained by flogging myself around again.

It's an amazing experience; not just the running but to spend that time in camp, laughing with your friends and sharing in the most extraordinary camaraderie between runners on the course (in particular, the awe and respect reserved for the crazy fools who attempt to complete 24 hours on the course solo).

It was bloody hard work this year in the relentless rain and sucking quagmire conditions... but just look at that smile on my wife's face in photos taken on her first lap and on her last lap (her fourth).  Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know?

My MS has affected me in lots of ways physically, but it has also unlocked a determination that I didn't know that I had and - in some ways - has enriched my life immeasurably by pushing me out of the door to discover a world I barely knew existed.

Here's to 2018.

How did you spend your weekend?

come on! UGH! COME ON!

Somewhat unexpectedly, I've been very much enjoying running in the Summer League races.  As the name implies, this is a series of races that take place on Wednesday nights across June, July and August around Nottinghamshire.  They're free to run: all you need is your running club vest.  The prospect of running a 5 mile race with some of the fastest runners in the county sounds awful, doesn't it? I trundle around in something like 40-minutes, but the winners are more than ten minutes faster than that.  But running clubs have changed massively, and now the field includes runners who are finishing a good half hour behind me too and I'm comfortably above halfway.  I have a little voice that whispers to me all the time that I'm not a fast enough runner to be a member of a proper running club... but I've decided to not let that voice stop me doing something that I enjoy.

Anyway.  Last week's run was up at Worksop College and the course was in Sherwood Forest.  It was a lovely setting and a gorgeous, sunny evening.  For all that I think that I've been getting slower and slower over the last few months, when I put my mind to it, I'm actually running pretty much as fast as I ever have, and my average pace over this course was something around 7:50 miles sustained over 5 miles.  I'm not going to win, but it's nice to open up the throttle and see that there's still something there.

As you would expect, you end up running with people who are around and about the same pace, and there are always a few people who you seem to be in-and-around for the whole race; sometimes pulling ahead and sometimes falling behind.  In this race, I quickly became aware that I was running with a woman who was a grunter.  I'm a relatively silent runner, but everyone is different... C. runs with a very definite double-huff for every step she takes as she controls her breathing to try and keep the asthma at bay. Whatever works, right?  This lady was making an extraordinary noise, grunting and shouting at herself:"Ugh.  Ugh. Come on!  Ugh.  COME ON!" Each to their own, but this was mildly distracting.  Still, she was running at the same pace as me, so who am I to criticise?

At about the 4 mile mark, the course turned for home up a hill along a narrow, bracken-lined path.  I don't really like hurting myself when running.  I think the way to really get faster is to be prepared push yourself into the red; to bury yourself and to manage the discomfort.  I don't like to do that, and I often find myself crossing the finish line with a little bit left in the tank.  At this particular 4 mile mark, I caught myself holding back and thought that, for once in my life and safe in the knowledge that there was less than a mile to go, I would push a bit harder.  I quickly caught up with this woman as she grunted her way up the hill, still shouting encouragement to herself.  As I passed her, for what I assumed would be the very last time, I turned to her and said:

"Well done.  Keep going."

Pretty standard stuff.  Us runners are pretty encouraging, in the main.  Or so you would think.  Far from being encouraged, this woman turned to me and said in a distinctly sharp tone of voice:

"I prefer to talk to myself"

I was so surprised, it took a moment to register that yes, she had in fact just said that to me.. and by then I was powering ahead, leaving this miserable cow in my dust.

Charming though, right?  Although, whenever I tell this story to other runners, they seem to all know exactly who I mean.  What a way to find local celebrity. 

I bet she's fun at parties. 

Not that runners go to many parties.

...and if they do, they're not drinking much because they have a long run in the morning.

But, yeah, some runners are fun at parties.  

Possibly.

vapour trails...

In news that will come as no surprise to anyone, I seem to have accidentally signed up for a trail marathon in October.

Bear with me.

The plan has always been to build towards a third London marathon in April.  I'm currently half marathon fit, and I was planning on holding that to the end of the year (with a couple of halves and with the Thunder Run 24 hour relay along the way), building up to around 16 miles on my long run by the end of the year and then marathon training proper from January.

I've been feeling okay: I did eight miles with C. on a rainy Monday morning and then backed it up with another four-or-so miles that afternoon.  Neither run was very fast, but speed isn't really the objective here as I was thinking about the 4 or 5 10km laps that I'm likely to have to do across 24 hours at Thunder Run towards the end of July.

So what happened?

Well, it was World MS Day on Wednesday and I was chatting with some friends about how MS is such an uncertain condition that affects sufferers in different ways.  It took me four years to get a diagnosis, and I had no way of knowing that I would then use that diagnosis as a spur to start running marathons.

"Well how about a trail marathon, then?  To really stick two fingers up at MS?"
Super Kev is a machine and an inspiration: he's a fantastic runner who is quick over pretty much any distance from 1 mile to 100 miles. He's also an incredibly generous man who is happy to give up his time to help other runners.  I've been going out running the trails with him every Thursday night over the last few weeks, and he's been kind enough to run at my pace. It turns out that he's always wanted to have a go at the Spires & Steeples challenge: a trail marathon from Lincoln to Sleaford on 15th October.
Abigail, another wonderfully generous, community-spirited runner was quick to get involved.  "That sounds brilliant.  I'm in.  Tim?"

...and so I heard myself agreeing to get involved too.

I haven't formally entered yet, but I'm actually warming to the idea.  Trail marathons are apparently a completely different kettle of fish to a road race, with a gentler pace and cake. Throw some good friends into the mix, and I guess that means marathon training is going to start a little earlier than planned.

Hey ho.  Take that, MS.

pray that my feet don't fail me now...

I feel like my legs are getting worse and my running is getting slower; I feel like I have no business joining an athletics club and spending time trailing in after much faster runners.... but then there are also nights like tonight.

I was the 312th man to finish at the second Summer League race of the season at Holme Pierrepont this evening, but I ran the 5 mile course at an average pace of 7m 50s per mile (as fast as I've run over any distance in some time.  In fact, my magic mile time trial the other week was only about a minute quicker than that) and - most importantly of all - I really enjoyed myself.  I think it's pretty clear from the smiles and the sprint finish I managed at the end that I'm not the kind of runner who likes to beast himself, flogging out every last iota from my body.  I prefer instead to hold something back, but that's okay too.

I actually look like I might be enjoying myself.  Maybe there's some life in the old dog yet.

I'm not quite dead just yet.

Also, sun's out, guns out....