LEJoG 2017 - looking back and forward

If you don't follow me somewhere else on the Internet, the latest is that I had to stop after 21 and a half days due to excruciating pain in my leg, most likely tibialis anterior tendinitis.

I tried to rest for a couple of days to let things heal, after a local GP had a look at it, but even staying off it for 2 days made zero difference to the amount of pain once I'd really got going for the day's distance.  I tried strapping it and bracing it, but it got so painful that I ended up howling with pain and unimaginable amounts of tears and snot streaming down my face for the well over an hour it took me to get down from Minch Moor to Traqair.  At that point I was in the most pain I've ever been in, including when I broke my collarbone towards the final 15km of the bike leg of Ironman 70.3 Galway in 2012. So I decided to get myself to the nearest A&E as I was worried that it was something broken.  Luckily for me there was a health centre in the village a couple of miles away and they helped me get a taxi to Borders General hospital. I left the hospital with a pair of crutches, a letter to my GP, and instructions to stuff my face with Ibuprofen and paracetamol for a couple of days and then just the Ibuprofen for the rest of the week. I'd been avoiding NSAIDs to that point, due to it being a super bad idea to take those while doing heavy exercise. After 2 days, however, the pain was hugely reduced to the point where I was OK walking a bit without crutches, but my leg/ankle still got creaky and sore after a while. So, I've been really doing nothing now for a few more days (it's 5 days now since I stopped) and there's a little swelling still and some restriction in flexing my ankle in either direction (I've been doing exercises to make sure it doesn't get stiff), but I've been tentatively looking at when I can get back and finish the route. Sure, I could have taken Ibuprofen for the remaining 15.5 days and carried on in the hope that it worked well enough and didn't cause my kidneys to give up, but I wasn't willing to do that to myself. I'm stubborn, but not totally stupid.

Thanks to @benunsworth for making this brilliant map!

I've done 630 miles. There's 405 left to do. I need to avoid (Scottish) school holidays and key work events and negotiate *another* 2 weeks unpaid time off, but it looks like later in October might work and I should be well recovered by then.

Looking back, it's slightly surreal to think of how far up the UK I got - well into Scotland, not far short of Edinburgh. I saw some beautiful and very varied scenery, pretty villages, brilliant cafes, pubs and B&Bs. I problem solved my way through many obstacles: ankle to shoulder height nettles, gorse, thistles, holly and hawthorn; electric fences; barbed wire; herds of cows; very anti-social land owners (hey, yeah, I'll just stick a head-height bank of soil and a ditch across the entire width of the field and an electric fence, a hawthorn hedge and some barbed wire!); broken stiles and bridges; broken/locked/wired shut gates; missing bridges; unrelenting sun for 2x days with no shade; cold; wet feet for 12+ hours; 45-50mph winds while up on the highest point of the moors... etc. I've met some really lovely people and been shown great kindness many times. I've spent days where the only talking I've done is saying hello to cows and rabbits. I've gotten a *lot* of vitamin D! And I've raised over £3,500 for Public Health Collaboration (so far)! My muscles and engine were fine throughout. I slept really well. I used every single piece of kit I'd packed except the two things I'd really only need in the more remote bits of Scotland - a fabric bucket for collecting water, and a water bottle with a filter in it.

It's been an amazing experience; sure, there were tough bits and I got frustrated and upset a good few times mainly due to people being unthinking/inconsiderate (e.g. car drivers who have no idea of the highway code and how to deal with pedestrians). But it took a biomechanical breakdown to put it on pause for now.

I've got pretty bad blues - I wanted to do it in one, and I'm really missing being out in the countryside whatever the weather. Need some time and care before anything hard - physical or mental.

LEJoG 2017 - the final month preparation...

One month to go!

Route plotting is done.  Kit is mostly locked in, with a couple of changes to test before completely finalising.  Training mostly done - in so far as you can train for this sort of thing.  And now it's a great time to talk about the charity I'm intending to raise awareness of and funds for...

Public Health Collaboration (PHC) is a a charity dedicated to focusing on improving public health in the UK, through research, providing resources and information about issues relating to lifestyle and health in this age of avoidable and reversible obesity, diabetes, dementia and other metabolic syndrome related problems that increasing number of people are suffering from.  The advisory board is made up of consultant cardiologists (Dr Aseem Malhotra), psychologists, (including Dr Tamsin Lewis - @sportiedoc) GPs and a Professor of Obesity research (Prof. John (Iain) Broom).


I was pretty overweight myself in the past (only *just* technically obese by the BMI ratio measure), and when the shock(s) came and I started to take control, I eventually came across lots of information relating not just to weight loss and healthy weight maintenance but also the impact of diet on other factors than weight, including brain and heart health.  Thanks to an initial curiosity and refusal to believe that counting calories for the rest of my life was the only answer to maintaining a healthy weight, I crossed paths with Dr Tamsin Lewis, who set me down the path of learning and research into what goes on with what you eat and how it affects your body in the short and the long term. And taking control of these things for myself (11 years on after losing 30kg, I'm still a healthy weight and started sport 6 years ago, finally really able to enjoy it!). Yes, there are ranges of behaviour and response, but there are limits and at some point things start to break in the short and, more horribly, the long term becomes a lot less long even when once of your symptoms is not becoming overweight.

So... take a look at what PHC are about and then head on over to my fund-raising page on TotalGiving (all donations go directly to the charity) and consider giving a little to help turn the tide of poor health in the UK for now and for the future!

LEJoG 2017 - FAQs Part 1

It's definitely time to put out some FAQs here as I've had more than a few questions so far:

1 - Who/What charity are you running for?

I'd normally get pretty pissy with this question in relation to races and/or touring runs. I  run because I enjoy it.  I may not be an elite athlete and I'm never going to win a race, be fastest at anything etc. but I really do enjoy it.  I also find it uncomfortable and distasteful to beg for money from friends, family and strangers, especially for enjoying myself and doing something I'm pretty sure I'll achieve.

However.  This is different.  1000 miles is an 'ing long way, especially considering I'm carrying all my own stuff.  So it's actually a challenge that I'm not certain I'll complete.  I also finally have found a cause I really do care about (and they just got charitable status, but not yet set up on a mass fund-raising site yet, so watch this space).  This time, yes, I will be raising money and awareness for PHCuk.org.

2 - You're running a long way, in the middle of nowhere a lot; what about food?

Yep!

So.  I almost always run before eating; my stomach is just happier that way.  I'm OK eating *while* running but generally in the morning it works out better if I start out before breaking fast.  I'm intending to eat one meal per day, usually.  It worked really well on my 6 day running tours and I often eat 2 or fewer meals per day anyway these days.  I'll carry some emergency food for when I end up camping wild and away from anywhere I can buy food for the day.

On a related note; water. I'll be carrying 1.5L. That's heavy.  Water is all over the place, in shops, pubs, cafes, etc. as well as springs (there's a ton of them all over the place) and I have capability to purify 80L over the time I'm away.

3 - Have you practised putting up your tent in a howling gale and downpour?

No.

Three points on this one.  A. I'm not intending to camp every night - I'm carrying a tent for the times I want to stop for the day and there is no hut/bothy/yurt/barn/B&B/hostel or cheap hotel.  B. There are extremely few exposed parts of the route I have mapped (plus, I'd have to be really unlucky to get that sort of appalling weather in June).  And C. my tent is *extremely* easy to put up.  In a light breeze, it takes just over a minute.  (and a couple of minutes to put away)

4 - Have you checked your stove is safe to use inside your tent?

It isn't.

Again, two points. A. see above about weather/exposure. and B. Heck no! It is *never* safe to use a gas camping stove in an enclosed/unventilated space.  If I'm camping and the weather is appalling and there's nowhere nearby to get a warm meal/drink, I just won't have one. It won't kill me.

5 - Can I come and run with you?

Mostly no.  For safety reasons, my location will be known to very few people, and by a satellite tracker.  I may make an exception for the last day of my run, which is planned to be only 8 miles up to Duncansby Head, but *when* I'll get there is pretty much down to how things go in the 36-41 days before that.

I'll have a PLB a bit like this one. But not this one. A different one.

HELLO HORSEY, CAN I GET PAST PLEASE?

6 - Safety?

This is the big one.  I'll never be more than 15 miles from civilisation in some form.  I've got a satellite tracker/personal locator beacon that will last for 45 days of active tracking at a 10 minute interval before I need to replace the battery (and I'll have spares).

Being in the UK, there's pretty much nothing venomous enough to really do damage, and no large predators that would want to eat me.  I'm reasonably experienced with bull, cow, sheep and horse wrangling where I need to get by and they're in the way.

7 - Aren't you going to get really tired?

Yes.

And... I'll get hot, cold, scratched, sore shoulders, sore feet, back ache, cut, stung, grazed, blisters, sun burn, wind burn and chafing.  I'll probably have nights with very little sleep.  I'll also trip and/or fall over, especially when I'm tired.  And I'll make poor decisions through inexperience and/or tiredness.   I've also got a route that avoids any of the particularly difficult parts of the UK; the Pennines, most of the Lake District, the Cairngorms.  Anywhere really high that can get difficult in "weather" is off the route.

This isn't a walk in the park.  It isn't easy.  It's a very long way.  I'm not deliberately setting out to sit on a spike here, but without increasing the time for the trip (which would cost me a lot of lost earnings at work) and spending a *lot* of money and/or carrying a *lot* more kit, it's not going to be a luxury trip.

Swimathon 2010

I've signed up with less than 2 weeks to go, to complete the 5km challenge in this year's Swimathon (for Marie Curie Cancer Care).   5km is a heck of a long way to swim... for reference, in the 30m pool I'll be doing it in, it will be 167 lengths; in the pool near where I work, it would be 294 lengths!  I've only ever swum 3.2km in one day before and that was over 10 years ago now.  It's going to be long, it's going to be tiring, but it's something I can actually do right now when the physio won't let me do much else.  We're in the sporting season now, and dammit I want to do sport!  Especially when it's for a good charity.

So, please take a look at my fund-raising page and donate if you can.  It would mean a lot to me, and a lot to the Marie Curie Cancer Care fund too!