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.

relax....

I was at the hospital twice this week, and both visits have given me plenty to think about.

The first trip was on Wednesday, when I went in for some surgery.  I was in early doors and out by lunchtime on the same day, but the procedure was serious enough to require a general anaesthetic and has seen me both signed off work for at least the next two weeks and banned from any form of strenuous exercise for the next month.

Four whole weeks!

To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect.  I know that general anaesthetic is pretty unpleasant, but I didn't quite know why the consultant thought I was going to need as much as three weeks off work.  What did he know that I didn't? Was I going to be in pretty significant pain or was it going to be mild discomfort and a relatively slow pace of healing? As it turns out, once I got the anaesthetic out of my system (as well as the general, they pumped the area they operated on full of a local too, so it took a while to wear off), although I was pretty sore and swollen, I basically felt okay.  
In fact, almost immediately, I was bored.

On Thursday, I watched a couple of episodes of Frasier, the Keanu film "Constantine", played a bit of Cricket Manager 2017, fed (and tickled) a neighbour's cat, read a book and listened to loads of music... but I could really feel the long days off work stretching out in front of me.  How on earth am I going to fill all of that time when I'm not working and I can't run? What am I going to do to keep myself from going completely mad?

I settled down a bit by Friday.

The test match at Headingley started, which helped to fill the day, but a coffee and a catch-up with a friend gave me a bit of perspective.  What was this if not an opportunity to step off the treadmill and to breathe in the air and smell the coffee for a couple of weeks?  I've run the best part of 700 miles so far this year, with marathon training yet to start, and since my job changed in April, I've also been spending a lot more time at work and on out-of-hours cover overnight and through the weekends.  Isn't this a great opportunity to just relax; to read books; to watch some box-sets and to just generally try to unwind and let my brain and muscles rest properly for the first time in months?

I was back at hospital on Friday for a regular appointment with the neurologist.  This is always good for a dose of perspective.  Although my MS has been very stable since my diagnosis, I've struggled with the feeling in my legs a bit this year; I've fallen over a couple of times when out running and my legs have generally felt stiff and unresponsive.  Then again, when you look around an MS clinic waiting room and see people in their wheelchairs or struggling to walk with sticks, have I really got much all that much to grumble about in the grand scheme of things? So my legs feel a bit weird at the end of a half marathon?  Can you hear how ridiculous that must sound to a senior consultant who is dealing with people who can't walk at all?  I'm certainly not unaffected by MS and my most recent MRI scans show that a few more scars have developed in my brain.... but as long as I tolerate my weekly injections and the side-effects okay, and I can still get myself up and out for a run, then I'm really doing pretty well.

I'm sure I'm going to be frustrated and bored over the coming days, not to mention a bit sore from the surgery for a few more days yet..... but why not see the glass as half full for once and take the unexpected break from work and from running as an opportunity to try and appreciate what I do have?

Yeah... you're probably right.  Ask me how I'm doing next week and we'll see if I'm quite so phlegmatic about things.

fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way...

I've been expecting an appointment through from one of the many consultants that I see.  I had a consultation in December and was told to expect a follow-up in six months.  Although I've been anxious to chase this appointment through, I've been as patient as I possibly can be, hoping that my name will pop up on their system in due course and that appointment will come through and everything will be tickety-boo.

I nearly called to chase them at the end of May, but counted the months back carefully on my fingers and realised that I needed to give them more time, even though I knew it was probably going to take a while between chase and appointment.  So I waited.  I was hoping there would be something on my doormat when we got back from the USA last week... but there was nothing.

So, today I called them.

"Oh yes.  You're on our system. Well, as you're on the phone now, I'll check to see what's available.  How about the 4th July.... oh!  That's tomorrow! No? Well I have an appointment on Saturday and then nothing until November."

So.... I suppose the positive to take from this is that I have the appointment I've been waiting for later on this week, which is good.  On the other hand, I can't help but think about what would have happened if I hadn't made that call this afternoon.  Presumably, that appointment on Saturday would never have come my way, and I could feasibly have been waiting until November for my follow-up.  That seems ridiculous.

Look.  I love the NHS.  My father dedicated most of his working life as a doctor to it and I've experienced up-close just how amazing it is.  Since my diagnosis with MS, I've received literally hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of care; the drugs I inject every week are worth hundreds of pounds each time, never mind all the scans and consultations and diagnostics and things.  The quality of care has been excellent and unquestioning.  I've never paid a penny directly for any of it.  That's an amazing thing and something to be celebrated and cherished.

But this episode with my appointment just seems a bit....haphazard.

sing, sing, sing...

Sunday was the climax to the Spring season at choir, with a big concert at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre.  The choir actually did two performances on the day, but I only sang in the matinee because I'm currently mindful of how much energy I'm expending in the build-up to Sunday's little run.

It's all about the bass....

The concert went really well, and we played to a packed auditorium, but it's been a bit of a bumpy season: I was initially quite keen to sing a solo, but for various reasons, decided not to go ahead with it... and with hindsight, I'm really glad I didn't.  It's not that I don't think I'm capable of singing to the standard required, it's just that I think I'd underestimated how much of my mental and physical resources training for the marathon would take this year.  Much more than last year, anyway. 

I've really enjoyed singing with the choir over the last year or so, and part of that enjoyment comes from the fact that you have to put in a fair bit of effort to learn your part well enough to be able to sing it without your book.  It's easy enough to turn up to rehearsal each week and sing, but to take it up to the next level, you need to be able to take your nose out of the book and commit to following the prompts of the musical director.  To do that, I find that I have to spend an awful lot of time listening to the rehearsal tracks of my part, downloaded onto my iPod.  If you listen to that enough, you start to learn your part, which is especially important if your part doesn't follow the tune, which is usually the case as a bass.  It really needs to be second nature.. which is actually pretty hard, especially if you know the song you're learning.

This season's songs included several that I thought I knew really well.  Probably the hardest was "The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel, which is a great song but I had to work to actually learn the lyrics and to learn which bits I'm not supposed to be singing.  Even a song as seemingly simple as "Here Comes The Sun" turns out to be a bit of a nightmare of changing time signatures, requiring concentration to get right.

The net result of all this is that I basically listen to nothing by my rehearsal tracks for weeks.  This means that one of the greatest joys of finishing a season is that I get to listen to something else!  Since last Sunday, I've worked my way through some Muse, some Guns n"Roses, AC/DC, Soundgarden, a bit of Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Beastie Boys....

...the bad news is that the new choir season starts in exactly a week's time.  The rehearsal tracks are actually already available to download, but I'm just nowhere near ready to make that sort of commitment quite yet.

I feel like I win when I lose...

For many years, Abba left me utterly cold.  I can actually remember the very tail end of their career, and songs like "Super Trouper", "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme (a man after midnight)" and "Voulez-Vous".  There wasn't much music in the home when I was growing up, but somehow Abba found a way in.   I think the damage was done by "Dancing Queen" when I was a student.  Not the song itself, so much, as the ridiculous hysterical reaction it got whenever it was played.  I particularly hated the guys who, as with "I Will Survive", seemed to think that knowing the words to this song and enthusiastically joining in when it was played would help them attract women.

Maybe it worked.  What I do know for certain is that standing on the sidelines scowling *definitely* didn't work.....

It wasn't really Abba's fault, but I've sort of hated the band ever since.  "Muriel's Wedding" was alright because it was about a lot more than just the music, but I certainly wasn't about to go out of my way to watch "Mama Mia" (although, to be fair, that's about it being an obviously awful film rather than particularly about the music.  I'm sure plenty of Abba fans dodged that bullet too).

Initially, lost in a world of heavy metal and then The Smiths, this dislike wasn't really much of a problem... but as my appreciation of music began to broaden and to deepen, I became aware that Abba weren't just another crappy pop band, and that they were actually some of the finest exponents of the art of the pop song.  Perhaps it was even true that their songs often had depths beyond the melody.

I knew this, but still couldn't bring myself to open my ears to them.

Well, I'm older now, and I'm better able to put ridiculous preconceptions and prejudices behind me.  I'd been toying with the idea for a while, but finally went ahead and bought "Gold".

It's brilliant, of course it is.

I've been listening to Iron Maiden all week, but today I cycled to work listening to Abba.  It was a miserable, damp morning.... but you know what?  I felt FABULOUS, and I don't care who knows it.

FABULOUS.

More proof, if any more were needed, that young me was an idiot.

...and party every day

I don't know whether you think I spend my time either working, running or sleeping... but that's definitely how it feels to me at the moment.  Well, to prove that I do in fact have other things in my life, check out this video of the Stadium Rock Medley from our choir concert last night.



I'm told that I need to work on my "choir sway", and I seem to have a slightly unfortunate habit of leaning backwards as I sing, but I have to tell you that I really enjoyed that.  From the moment the first song that we learned in the very first session I attended was "Rock and Roll All Nite" by Kiss, I knew I was onto a winner.  The rehearsals have been a joy every Tuesday evening, last night's concert was great fun, and I'm really looking forward to the sell-out concert we're doing with a full live band at the Sheffield Octagon in a couple of weeks time.

I've been doing an awful lot of running recently, and trying to learn these songs has been a very welcome distraction, exercising a completely different set of muscles.  It's also quite nice being one of the youngest, for a change! (some of the choir really struggled with the rhythm of "Don't Look Back in Anger" because they're not familiar with the song... whereas I bought the CD single back in the day and know it inside out).

Thank you Sarah for persisting in asking me if I wanted to join.  You were absolutely right to suggest that I might enjoy it.  Thank you to everyone else for being so welcoming.

Tony has kindly put most of the set onto YouTube and you can view the playlist here.  If you're a fan of manly "umba-oowas", then I suggest you head over to have a listen to "Livin' on a Prayer" as I think you might be in for a bit of a treat....

That was an awful lot of fun.  We weren't exactly note perfect.... but it felt good.