HAWAII!!!)!£*$&)!^!^VV

Chrissie may not be racing this time, but she's there and so is the race

I've been a good girl and done all my training last week and I've done my rehab exercises and not done any weight bearing or resistance stuff with my left arm.  Can I go to Hawaii now please?

Actually, yes!  I'm off (horribly early) tomorrow morning and thanks to an early birthday present from my parents I don't need to worry quite so much about DVT for the 20+ hours of travelling in each direction.  Thanks to it being silly hot out in Hawaii, I'll get away with hand luggage only - I'm not that big (OK, a bit chubby at the moment), and hot weather clothes are thin and small.  Also, my fins -just- fit diagonally in the little wheelie case I have.  I'd rather not have to check in luggage if I don't need to, so the only restriction now is on toiletries and I can manage for 8 nights with a top limit of 100ml on any particular goop or liquid.

I'm really kinda excited about going to the Ironman World Championships to be there for the event, be involved as a volunteer, and see all of the cool kids of the sport, including the lovely guys of Team Freespeed who I met on a few event days this year.  I've got a few things to do while I'm out there, including watching the shoes and taking photos for the IMTalk Blue Seventy Aquathon, athlete escort on Friday, then finish line medal presentation duty on Saturday.  And a few other bits and bobs, like going for a swim out to the Coffees of Hawaii coffee boat etc.  I'm stocked up on waterproof sun screen, all packed and ready to go!  Wooooooo!

Bushy parkrun is 8!

And what better excuse to go for a run in the chilly autumn sun :o)

MOOOO! (yes, I know they're cervine, not bovine,
but they do moo!)

I got the train to Teddington as I'm still not cycling yet.  It's really very close to Bushy Park parkrun start and only 17 minutes from Wimbledon station - very handy for lots of London and Surrey people to get there.

It's Autumn and rutting season for the deer, so there are lots of warnings in the park that there are rather possessive stags parading about, bellowing and being a bit aggressive about their harems of does.  As long as you don't get too close, they're fine and won't charge, but oh boy are they vocal!

I just made it to the start area at around 08:50 to catch the end of the pre-run speeches and awards for the year at Bushy parkrun.  As it is the 8th anniversary, Nell McAndrew (OMG, she's only a year younger than me!) was there to start the run off and pose for photos with finishers.  She's so supportive of parkrun, running and sport in general - a great role model for women and girls in terms of healthiness.

There were -loads- of 50 and 100 shirts, not obvious from this picture

Nell prepares to take the megaphone to start the run

A reasonably pretty run ensued, with a field that must have broken the 1,000 runners mark for sure.  And for each 100th finisher, there were very pretty cupcakes and fizzy (prosecco for grownups, cola for the kiddies and teetotallers) to welcome them in...

Mmmcake!

 I caught sight of my lap splits from the 3rd km onwards and was quite pleased.  Thought I might even beat last week's time by quite a margin, but had a basic arithmetic fail (as well as Garmin saying the course was 5.13km).  Still... I managed to wind up the pace by 7-13s per km, km on km all the way through, with a good high cadence, even though I was wearing a t-shirt, long sleeved running top, long sleeved merino base/mid layer and a long sleeved cycling top on top!  Nice.  Beautiful day, lovely parkrun, good performance on the road of recovery and I'm a happy bunny!

5 hours? Is that all?

So, as you all know because I keep banging on about it, I'm recovering from a broken collar-bone at the moment.  If you've never broken a bone related to upper limbs you probably don't realise quite how many things it impacts that you wouldn't necessarily expect.  You'd expect that "all" you can't do is anything relating to directly weight bearing and lifting with the affected limb.  You wouldn't necessarily and immediately realise that you can't run (easily or naturally and certainly while the break is quite fresh you don't want to be jiggling the joint and broken bits about), you can't cycle at all ("surely you can cycle one-handed?" nope.), you certainly can't swim (and if there's any serious abrasions or related surgical wounds it's an even worse idea) and that stuff like washing, getting dressed, getting in and out of bed/cars etc. is really hard.  So you may not realise that despite it being only one little bone (that was "multifragmentary with anterosuperior, superior and posteroinferior intermediate fragments" which were "malpositioned and displaced" - i.e. broken into a few bits that were in the wrong places), life is impacted quite a bit.  Since I had the plate put in, the clock reset on healing but I already had 10 days of lack of exercise and my arm being permanently bent at the elbow so an extra 10 days of immobility in the muscles and joints of that arm as well as an extra 10 days of gently sliding fitness.  From the day after surgery to put the plate in, I religiously did the basic exercises (pendulum swings, assisted arm raises and cross-body swings progressing to unassisted) to restore mobility to the elbow and shoulder.

Last Thursday I had a hospital check-up that took me off the leash for a few things; showering and bathing (getting the wound/incision site wet), spin bike (no hands on handlebars), and running.  Which meant that I had a green light to get back into training.  With 4 weeks of zero exercise, I need to get it into my head that I can't just pick up where I left off at Galway 70.3.  The physio appointment on the same day as the check-up also gave me an assessment of progress (ridiculously good progress) and some extra exercises to finish off the mobility rehabilitation (straight arm raises overhead, using a mirror and both arms at once to make sure motion is even).  With that green light grinning at me, I let Rich know that I can start doing stuff again and he's given me some training sessions to do that take me up until I go to Kona.  Limited to running and spin bike, with 4 weeks of inactivity, as well as being in the "off season" now, I have a programme this week which totals an incredible 5 hours.  Having been training for months where the average planned sessions in a week was around 13 hours and a peak of 18.5 hours, 5 hours seems weird.  I know a large part of it is the lack of long bike ride at the weekend (that's 4-5 hours straight away) another chunk is no swimming (about 3 hours in a week) and the rest is taking it easy after a break.  But still, 5 hours seems like sod all.  I'll be a good girl though (apart from a little parkrun on Saturday which isn't on the schedule)

Have any of you struggled with getting back to fitness after a long break?  How did you motivate yourself if you didn't feel like doing any exercise or what did you do to hold yourself back if you were desperate to get on with it?  I know that Mike is heading back down the road and has come across revelation number one; how about the rest of you?

Shocked!

I'm allowed to run now, so I did parkrun this morning.  On an absolutely beautiful and perfect (in my opinion - sunny, bright and about 10ºC) day for running, the intention was to take it gently and trot 'round at a sensible, measured pace.  That didn't quite happen.

Photo taken last week at Wimbledon Common parkrun
by Clive Scammell (representative of today's weather)

MrTOTKat was off at a parkrun a hundred miles away (train for 110 miles, cycle for 1.5 hours, run parkrun for 5km, cycle for 1.5 hours, 110 miles on the train - nutter!), so I walked up to the common for parkrun, trotting a little bit every now and then to warm things up.  As I broke into a jog every now and then, I noticed my heart rate went shooting up pretty quickly, but dropped back again really quickly too.  Of course I expected my fitness to have dropped off quite a bit with 4 weeks of only 1 or 2 longish walks but nothing else to speak of, so I wasn't surprised that I was pushing a higher heart rate for less pace.  Also, it's pretty cold today so it is easier (for me at least) to work at a higher heart rate with less than the usual discomfort for that level of effort.

Ian Higgins

When I got to the common, I had a chat with a couple of people and found out that it was Ian Higgins' 250th run today, so that was a nice co-incidence to be there to celebrate that.  He's the run director for Wimbledon Common parkrun and is incredibly dedicated - in 2007, he directed and ran every single event that year, even the last one of the year when he was ill and put in his all-time personal worst time.  And one parkrun he turned up and announced he'd got married the day before!  I think it's in no small part down to him how successful Wimbledon Common parkrun has got and is now peaking at 380 runners!  It's a really sociable parkrun (as they all are)

Ian Higgins

Ambling down to the start, which is quite narrow, I tried to work out where in the field I should stand at the start in order to protect my shoulder a bit.  I decided that despite not being the quickest runner around, I'd go near the front and off to the left with the aim of having nobody to my left, minimising jostling on that side of me.  I didn't quite manage that, and I'm not sure the kids and parents took in the message Ian gave them in the race briefing of smaller children (i.e. less than teenagers) should start near the back so they don't get mown down as I was surrounded by really small kids.  Because of this, I ended up starting out quicker than intended and then held it.

I felt OK running, if a little ungainly.  At the moment when walking and running I need to consciously move my left arm back and forth as it naturally wants to sit, bent at the elbow, hand in front of my solar plexus.  I was also a bit concerned about tripping and falling or being jostled and my shoulder knocked.  Deciding to attempt a negative split, the chill temperature helped keep my effort level up with minimum discomfort and I didn't look at my watch at all so I had no idea what my heart rate was.  At the mid-point of the course I was pretty sure that I'd hear 13 mins something, and I did indeed (13:20ish as I crossed the mid-point).  On track for a high 26minute overall time if I held that average pace.  Lap two and I kept the pace roughly the same until there was 2km to go, then I turned up the gas as much as I could without going all-out.  All the people who went out too hard at the start were being passed and that always makes me feel better, no matter how bad a run I'm having.

Sociable parkrun - chatting around the water fountain

Having nothing left for a sprint finish, I knew that I'd been maintaining quite high effort all the way 'round and for once I remembered to stop my watch once I was over the finish line.  As it was a very busy parkrun, the finish chute got quite congested and we needed to double-up the queue for tokens (a couple of people got a tiny bit stressy about it, but nothing too bad) but there were 4 token scanners so almost no queueing at all to get the tokens and bar codes read.  Once I'd had my token read, I bothered to look at my watch to see what time I'd managed - 26:24 by my timing.  For the level of effort I'd put in, I'd've expected something in the low 24 minutes range, if I hadn't been doing nothing for the last 4 weeks.  2 minutes slower was a real shock.  What was an even bigger shock was the heart rate data - HRavg 94%, HRmax 99% !

On the way home, I decided to do a bit of an experiment; jogging home maintaining 81% HRmax and see what pace that turned out at.  07:40.  That's 2 minutes/km slower than I would get for 81% HR max 4 weeks ago.  A loss of 35% speed.  I'm absolutely stunned.

My recovery rate hasn't dropped off that much.  A less than scientific check tells me that I recover at >40bpm drop in <1 min after stopping exercise still, so that's not bad at all.

Anyway.  I feel *great* despite the stats on speed.  I know I'll get the speed back and it should take no longer to get it back than it did to lose it.  parkrun today makes me feel like this:-

Running makes you happy, no matter how slow or quick you are!

(All the photos in this articles are taken by me, when I was volunteering on photography duty at parkrun, apart from the one that Clive Scammell took - credited above.)

Recovery update

Yesterday, I had the first hospital check-up and physio appointments since I have my surgery.  The hospital check-up involved an x-ray to see how things were going with the plating and alignment of all of the fragments (shame I didn't get hold of any images, I really must ask at the next appointment 'cause they look really cool!).  A quick trip to radiology for that and then back to the consultant for a chat.  The consultant of the day, Mr Sharif, looked at Mr Pearse's notes from the surgery and laughed at the capitals and underlined; "ABSOLUTELY NO resistance, lifting or weight bearing till week 8 and only after a full range of movement has been obtained."  I don't think anyone expected the improvements I already have on that front, but anyway... next was having the dressing taken off, the butterfly stitches removed and the ends of the dissolvable stitches trimmed so they don't irritate me any more.  I'd been getting quite itchy from those.

The nurse peeled off the dressing and unstuck the butterfly stitches.  It felt pretty weird, to be honest.  I have absolutely no sensation at the end of my shoulder; the nerve serving that area was severed during surgery.  I was warned that it was about 80% likely that I may at least temporarily, if not permanently, lose sensation somewhere around that area, so that wasn't a complete surprise (you can see in the diagram below how many major nerves there are around the clavicle and where the incision would have been made - I am not a doctor, but I can imagine there are a bajillion minor ones around there and it'd be almost impossible not to end up cutting .  What was a surprise is where the sensation loss is and the effect on the surrounding area.

Credit:- MEDICAL RF.COM/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

I was expecting the area just below the clavicle to be numb, but it's the end of my shoulder (where the knobbly bit (or, acromion) sticks out,) and below that for about 4 inches, in a rough circle of 4" diameter, that's affected.  What's annoying is that the skin around it is super-sensitive in some kind of compensation for it and the slightest brush against those bits of skin gives an overload of feedback to the point of feeling painful.  Also, when the dressing and butterfly stitches came off, there was a good amount of top layer of skin lifted off where the road rash was, and those bits were a bit weepy.  No matter, I got a clear dressing to get me home from the appointment and an instruction from the nurse to "give it a good scrubbing" and "use your normal moisturiser on it 2-3 times a day" to minimise the scar from the incision.

Anyway, I asked the consultant what I was and wasn't allowed to do, exercise wise, and came out with an understanding of; running (as long as I don't fall over *cough*) is allowed, using a spin bike with no hands is allowed, immersing the wound in water is allowed (as long as I don't lie in the bath for hours), I can swim in a couple of weeks (as long as I don't use that arm - so finning out to the Coffees of Hawaii boat at Kona will be OK :o)).  Still "ABSOLUTELY NO resistance blah blah..." for another 6 weeks and a follow-up appointment in 6 weeks to take another x-ray and assess progress.

So, all good there.  Off to the physio next.

Having been utterly religious with my exercises since I was discharged from hospital, I knew I'd done pretty well with recover of mobility so far.  When I saw the physio, he was amazed at the progress.  He said it was incredibly good at this stage, almost unbelievably good.  Check out this more typical progression.  At exactly 2 weeks from surgery, I already have almost 100% mobility across all of the ranges of motion for the joint; I'm just missing 5% or so in the external rotation.  This is both brilliant and awful.  Brilliant in that I'm recovering so quickly, awful in that I still cannot use that arm for any resistance, lifting or weight bearing of any kind (anything up to and including a cup of tea is fine, more is not fine) and with such great mobility it will be all too easy to absent-mindedly do things (to be honest, the mobility reduction was my most frustrating experience.  I have to be mindful and careful and... well, really careful.  The bone bits may well be held together with a titanium plate and screws, but they still need to stick together and heal and loading up the joint will retard, prevent that process or even make the whole situation worse.

All in all, I'm really happy with the status at the moment.  I'm happy to have had 50 minutes on the spin bike today and I've got parkrun tomorrow.  Looking good!