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.

don't stop moving...

As they're obviously trying to keep (potentially vulnerable) people away from the clinic at QMC at the moment, I had my annual consultation with my neurologist over the phone today. Actually, it was a surprisingly effective way of doing it and was probably as helpful as any of the sessions I've had at clinic since I first started getting symptoms. 

The long and the short of it is that my disability has been slowly increasing over the last few months/years and today they've shifted my diagnosis from 'relapsing-remitting' MS to 'secondary progressive' MS. 

I think this sounds more significant than it is. Ultimately, it's just a label to describe the way my disease is progressing. Most people with MS have a series of relapses, each relapse bringing new symptoms and new problems which get a bit easier with time (without ever completely disappearing), before the next relapse arrives and starts the cycle again. Almost all the treaments for MS are designed try and slow down the frequency with which you have relapses, thus slowing the progress of the disease and increasing disability. There isn't a cure. 

I've never really had relapses and have just seen a slow, but steady increase in the severity of my existing symptoms. I haven't been on a disease modifying therapy for a couple of years now, so shifting my diagnosis is really only an acknowledgement of the way my MS seems to be progressing: I'm not expecting relapses, but I am expecting my legs to get stiffer (amongst other things). The shift closes the door to lots of treatment options, but may open the door to others. 

It's only a label... but at the same time, it can't help but feel like a significant moment. It sounds significant. 

Still, I have much to be thankful for: we're off on an 11 mile run tomorrow morning and I've run a little over 1,100 miles so far this year. Very little of that has been as fast as I would like, but I know that I'm still capable of running quickly when I really want to, and I was only a few seconds off my mile PB a few weeks ago. Whilst I now don't trust my legs to the extent that I won't go out without knee pads and wrist guards, running remains at least as important to me now as it ever has done and I cherish what I can still do. 

Every run, no matter how long or how fast, still feels like sticking two fingers up at this diease. Long may it continue.

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.

what time is it?

About three years ago, I upgraded the watch I used to track my runs. Before this point, I was using a pretty basic Garmin that I'd earned as a loyalty reward at Sweatshop Running Club. It was a brilliant little thing that revolutionised the way I measured the distances I run, but it was hardly a fashion item. As a result, I wore it to run or bike, but then took it off and wore a proper watch.

This changed the day I bought a Garmin Fenix 3HR. Although this does basically the same job as my first Garmin, it was a lot more stylish and also did cool things like measure my heart rate and track my daily step count. As a result, I stopped wearing my nice watch and just wore my Garmin every day. It's amazing how quickly you get sucked into caring about things like how many steps you take and how many flights of stairs you climb in a day and how that measures against your targets.

This is clearly great for people who need a little encouragement to be more active. However, as someone who runs five or six times a week and a hundred or so miles a month, I don't really need to watch my step count. Interesting though it was, all it really meant was that I had entirely stopped wearing my nice watch. The Garmin is nice enough, but my other watch was much nicer.

I've broken the habit. I scraped my Garmin along a wall on Lady Bay Bridge when hit by a particularly strong gust of wind on Sunday's run and needed to replace the screen cover (it's a long story, but briefly: after a couple of years of to-ing and fro-ing, Garmin replaced my 3HR with a Garmin 5 to try and get around persistent problems with the altimeter. Great, but the upgraded watch didn't have a tempered glass screen and needed some additional protection).  As I couldn't immediately find my spare screen cover, and because I didn't want to scuff up the actual screen itself, I took the Garmin off and put my proper watch back on. I'd often looked at it a little sadly, but couldn't somehow break the habit of constantly needing to know where I was with my step count.

After a couple of days with my good watch on, I'm still marvelling at what a nice watch it is and why on earth I didn't do this earlier. Mind you, the Garmin takes its time from the satellite and is 100% accurate. My nice watch... isn't. It's also an automatic, meaning that it gets its charge from being on my wrist. Having barely been used for a while, it's working fine and then stopping overnight when I stop moving, and I find myself taking it off and waving it around for a few minutes to try and build up a bit of a charge. I'll probably keep it on with my Garmin when I next go for a run. Wearing two watches on a run instead of just one. I suppose that's progress? Still, I've broken the step count tyranny over my life for the time being, anyway.

What a world we live in.

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.

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.

open up my mouth, air comes rushing out...

Perhaps it's my age, but I find myself becoming irrationally angry when I see a child on a motorised scooter or mini-buggy or something. It's becoming increasingly common to see them on the paths and playing fields around the river near me. The council have recently built a lovely little mini-roadway around there, complete with pedestrian crossings and traffic signals, designed to help kids become more road aware on their bikes and things. Yesterday, seeing a little girl motoring around there on a scooter with an engine just made me feel cross and a bit sad.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I would have absolutely loved to have one of these when I was a kid... but not having one meant I was forced to get out on my pushbike under my own steam, and I'm pretty sure that didn't do me any harm in the long run.

That girl on the mini-roadway wasn't paying any attention to the traffic lights, either... and I hope she never takes that scooter out onto the roads.

Tsk.

Is it any wonder, I found myself chuntering to a friend as we were doing a warm-up before an interval session on the playing fields, watching a slightly tubby child driving around on a miniature four-wheeled, motorised truck, that type 2 diabetes is such a plague and that our kids are growing up fat?

**Pause for reflection**

.... rather than just growing up skinny and judgmental like me.

hot, hot, hot...

I'm suddenly feeling a bit emotional at the thought of running a marathon on Sunday.

I've run this marathon twice before, so I'm not intimidated by the distance and I know I've put the hard work into my training. I've run the hard yards through a pretty brutal and relentless winter and know that I've earned my place at the start of what looks like it might be the hottest London Marathon on record (typical, right? You train through the Beast from the East and end up running in a heatwave).

I'm feeling emotional because I've been humbled again by the generosity of the people donating money on our fundraising page. Our friends, family and lots of total strangers have been dipping their hands into their pockets and have nudged us towards a fantastic total -- currently over £7,000 before gift aid. The MS Trust is a fairly small charity, but the impact that they have on the lives of people with multiple sclerosis and their families is massive. I was attending an MS clinic the other day, and the nurse that I saw was trained by the MS Trust (many others are also partly funded by the Trust), and the leaflets I was given to help me with some important decisions were funded and produced by the MS Trust. The money that we raise here will make a genuine difference.

As usual, I've deployed my tired old sob story in an attempt to emotionally blackmail people into donations. In 2016 I was an official London Marathon blogger, but this time around, my story was picked up by the Daily Mirror and run both online and in the printed edition. This has been more than a little surreal, not least because the bottom 25% of the page I'm featured on tells the story of someone running the marathon without functioning kidneys.

As well as helping me give people another nudge towards our donation link, this sort of exposure is so important for the charity in helping them to increase their reach. It was a little weird to see myself in a mass circulation tabloid, mind. They describe me as "fun loving Tim", possibly because I'm wearing a tutu.

I'm obviously not shy about deploying my story like this, but it's strange to see people talking about how remarkable I am, how my PB is "Brilliant" (well, I'm hoping to beat it this year, for starters...weather permitting). I don't feel particularly inspiring or amazing.

I mostly just feel lucky.

My race number for Sunday is 24120. Look out for the tall, skinny chap in a blue tutu.

You can sponsor us here: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Team/TCK

don't stop moving...

There was a time when thought I was essentially immune to the common cold.  Well, perhaps not exactly immune, but I just never seemed to catch the infections that clobbered everybody else around me.  I might wake up one morning with a slightly scratchy throat, but it never seemed to develop into anything more substantial.

Rather smugly, I always put this down to the fact that I was reasonably fit and healthy and ate quite a lot more fruit and vegetables than average. Then I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and began to inject myself regularly with a drug designed to suppress my immune system.  The colds quickly followed.

It turns out that I wasn't immune to the common cold after all and that, actually, I was just being protected by a hyperactive immune system that was spoiling for a fight with almost anything.  The immune-suppressants soon put paid to that.

Dammit.

Worse still, when I go down with a cold now, I seem to find it almost impossible to shake.  Where most people are more or less back to normal after a week or so, I find that the symptoms drag out for months longer than that. For each of the last few years, I've had that a cold develops into something else in my lungs and, although it doubtless started out as a viral infection, I've ultimately needed an inhaler and some antibiotics to finally shake it off.

As a runner, of course, this is doubly frustrating as anything in your lungs makes running a very dubious prospect indeed. I lost six weeks of running at the back end of last year with a particularly persistent cough and every single day not running really eats away at my own personal sense of wellbeing.  I had to watch the Turkey Trot half marathon instead of running it. Imagine!

This year's cold, I'm told, is a particularly nasty strain.  Naturally, I caught it almost immediately.

Because I'm stupid and I'm stubborn, although my cold really developed over the course of the last week, I still dragged myself out on Sunday to run around the Royal Parks Half Marathon with my wife.  It was a lovely, sunny autumn morning and the course takes you through Hyde Park, St James Park, around Horse Guards and past the Palace.  It's well-supported and quite delightful.... but I predictably found it more of a struggle than either of my full marathons.  For (almost: mile 15-16 in our first marathon) the first time time running together, C found herself gently trying to pace me around the course. Not in the least bit surprising, right?

I look a bit like death in that second photo, eh?  Nice medal though.

I hate colds.  For someone with an incurable chronic illness, I have a surprisingly low tolerance for being ill.  Well, I've still got a couple of days before my next half marathon on Sunday, so.....

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.

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....

all bound for Mu Mu Land...

So, we ran the Milton Keynes Half Marathon on Monday.

I actually grew up around here, so it was sort of like a home fixture and we were able to stay at my mum and dad's house the night before rather than have to drive all the way down from Nottingham in one go (they weren't actually there, so we did rather use their house as somewhere to sleep, but a 10 mile journey in the morning rather than 65 miles was most welcome).  Although I do a fair bit of running, I don't actually get much of a thrill entering formal events and collecting medals, but this was a sort of start to training for the 2018 London Marathon and so I put on the MS Trust vest and blue tutu and committed to running the whole thing with my wife.

It was nice.  When you think of Milton Keynes, I'm sure you think about roundabouts... and the first five or six miles was on the wide boulevards of the city centre, taking in a few roundabouts before dipping off into one of the older parts of the city and taking us past some lovely cottages and onto paths through parkland.  It was really pretty nice.  We kept to the right as the marathon and half marathon courses diverged, but the route of the full goes out past Willen Lake and into some nice looking parks before heading back into the city to the stadium finish.  13.1 miles was plenty for me, but if you're looking for a nice spring marathon, I reckon you could do worse.  It was well-organised, reasonably well supported and, because of the stadium start, you could stay indoors and warm until just before you started running... at lots of races, even in summer, you end up doing quite a lot of standing around in the early morning getting cold.

If we're going to run London together again, we're clearly going to have to get used to each other's little foibles again: I don't like to stop/start or to change my pace very much, and my wife likes to stop to eat/drink and then slows down uphill and speed up downhill.  Running together, like many other aspects of a marriage, is about compromise and understanding.

Yeah.  We've got some work to do.  Check out this video of our finish... I was slightly head as we entered the stadium and slowed down, looking over my shoulder to wait for my wife to catch up so we could finish together.  As you can see, she sprinted past me.... so she says to catch that woman running next to her.  Fairly rude, I would say.  As it happens, our chip times are exactly the same.  This is because the wise man has learned to cross the starting line a step behind his wife for pretty much exactly this reason.

There was a pretty nice medal and t-shirt in the finisher's pack too.  The cow represents Milton Keynes' famous concrete cows, of course... but those sunglasses?  They're from a mural inside Milton Keynes Central Library that pastiches Seurat.  You see, local knowledge.

I've got a couple more half marathons in my diary for the rest of the year, together with the 24 hour relay race at Thunder Run in July.  My plan for training for the marathon next year is to try and keep my mileage up to about the 15 mile mark to the end of the year, and then to not change my training programme too much in 2018, apart from to ramp up that long run every Sunday.  Body depending, obviously.  I've run a marathon on my own now, and time really isn't the most important thing to me now.  I've been approached by the PR team of the Royal Parks half marathon, and they're going to feature me in a press release for their event, so watch this space for more exciting running and sponsorship news.

Well, only eleven-and-a-half months to go now!