SQUARE ONE
ENDING 2015...

Does the world really need another droning dialogue about the act of putting one foot in front of the other at something other than walking speed? Probably not.
I can entirely relate to the tuts, the sighs, the rolling of the eyes and even cursory vulgarities. Not just another bloody running blog to add to an already saturated pitch, but what of the author? Just who the hell am I in the world? And more to the point, who the hell am I in the running world?
Well, as the title would suggest, very much a nobody in particular. I've had a few good years of racing, I even won one. But I've got nowt to shout about. So I should apologise in advance that I'm going to allow these ramblings to seep in to the public domain, for should somebody actually read them - even just one person in the whole world get the tiniest microgram of interest from what is written - then I would be sufficiently flattered and humbled. In my defence to the rightful cynicism of those who may condemn this indulgence of mainstream run blog culture, I must declare previous engagement with one I completed back in 2010. So I'm not entirely jumping on the bandwagon with this latest offering.
But why again and why now? Well, regardless of how the narrative may appear to contort over these pages, how facts, figures, cliches and excuses may inevitably heap boredom upon a prospective reader - and I'm sure they will - essentially I am starting this for my own personal record, perhaps to read back upon when time thins the memory and I wish to recall in more detail these good old running days of the present. Much the same reason behind my Race Diary at the turn of the decade I suppose. But I am going to try and stick at it for more than a year this time around.
Still reading at this point? Then you must be the one, thanks for getting this far!
Another reason for reinvigorating the blogging habit is the fact that I am actually running regularly at the moment. Obviously this is an essential factor, or this running nobody in particular would not have any running content upon which to write about.
Summarising my form since writing that diary of 2010 isn't worth too much detail to be frank. In fairness, 2011 was actually a really good year, 2012 had it's moments... but since then however,  generally my running and more specifically the competitive side of things has been slowly degenerating. Not for the want of trying it must be stated, but it's the usual runner's tiresome whinge fest... niggles and injuries, unable to get a couple of month's consistent training in without some other newly discovered body part becoming aggravated and sending fitness back to square one.
Square one is somewhere I have been on plenty of occasions over the last four years. During this period I have crept in to my early forties and let me tell you now my one loyal reader, if you happen be a teen, twenty or thirty something runner, savour it... recovery does not seem to embrace itself upon the body as generously once you enter the threshold of your fifth decade on this planet. Worse than that, square one seems a damn sight further away from square two than it used to be.
Put simply, for me the next year could be do or don't and it is that very journey that I intend to document. If I can't get back competing at a level from which I can at least be satisfied with, then the bowling green is calling me. It could be time for a change of sport.
Races have been few and far between these last few years. Never quite being able to reach what I consider to feel like race fitness. The last time I recall a decent spell was at the beginning of 2014 when I was back training on the track with my club, Blackburn Harriers, and getting some reasonable miles in ahead of my fifth consecutive Yorkshire Three Peaks Race. In preparation, I raced a confidence boosting course best at a local trail race, finishing fourth at the Roddleswort Roller and all looked good leading up to that last Saturday of April. But the Three Peaks Race can be a bruiser and unfortunately race day was a shocker that year. Cramp was the main issue.
But cards face up on the table so to speak, was this race always too long for me and was I now well beyond any chance of improving my time anyway? As well as taking crumpled and cramped hamstrings away from that race - which then proceeded to nag me all Summer - there was a significant mental blow to take on board. I also started thinking, 'What the bloody hell is the point?' - all that training and yet I'd done less mileage the previous year and ran my best Three Peaks time.
The thing is though, I am a runner, and as runners understand, there's only so long you can feel sorry for yourself before recharging the batteries to embark upon square one again. Belief remains intact, but if my body says 'no' and it's the body of a not-so-much-a-spring-chicken anymore, then it's a fine line between that stoic self belief and all out delusion. That's something to keep in check this year. The bowling green must beckon before delusion totally takes over. I think I will always run in some sort of capacity on the fells as long as my legs will let me. It's a love affair. But I need the feel of real competition for this to sustain itself as my number one sport.
Last year I decided to leave the Three Peaks alone with a view to concentrating on the shorter and middle distance races that had brought the modest best out of me in the past. But that plan never really got off the ground, barely leaving square one until the middle of summer when I built up a few races in the bag before a reasonable run at the Kentmere Horseshoe in July. I was only five or six minutes outside my previous best at Kentmere after a long battle throughout the second half of that race with an Ambleside guy. We dead heated at the line. Trying to get rid of him down the choppier part of the descent back to Kentmere Valley - where you can't see the rocks for the bracken - was most likely to blame for pulverising an already aggravated issue on my left Achilles tendon. As I type this today, I have yet to race since then with the exception of an obligatory - bordering on compulsory as fell team captain - appearance at the British Fell Relays in October. My far fitter Leg 2 partner Jason Harbour put in to practice the theory that I was indeed stranded in square one once again.
Prior to those relays, I'd reached a stage where I felt I just couldn't physically run with this Achilles continuously stiff and sore, so I went for some treatment and advice from Garry Wilkinson at his GW Fitness & Rehab ranch. I was sent home with some tips for self treatment, massage and stretching and the good news was he suggested I could carefully run through the problem as it was similar trouble which he had experienced himself some years back.
By August I had taken a change of job and joined forces at Up & Running's new store in Clitheroe. A positive sideshow from this move was that it might also benefit my running fortunes. But before things got better, they got worse.
I was about to cycle in to work and did the fairly trivial bend down to grab one's shoes when the lower back took a strain. Disappointed at now being unable to comfortably arch my back for the bike ride, I went upstairs to take my cycling kit off and prepare for the drive instead. Reaching to peel off my socks, the back creased again and this time I ended up stuck down the side of the bed for thirty minutes until I was able to get upright. On the pain scale it was right up there and to be honest I was quite scared due to the initial disablement. I even rang Garry - what the bloody hell could Garry do on the end of the phone?! It really was panic stations and felt like I'd done something serious. Fortunately, t'uther 'alf Sara was off that day and helped me out. But it took a few days and some beefy prescription tablets to gingerly get back on my feet.
Typically, this happened with a week to go until the Ben Nevis race which I was really looking forward to tackling for the first time. I'd been attempting to play catch up with training in order to get reasonably 'fell fit', if only to just get this big race under my belt and be able to at least enjoy the experience. All booked and ready to roll for the big one then, but there was no way I was going to recover in time. I doubt I could have sat and travelled comfortably enough up to Fort William, let alone put my back in to a 4400 feet climb and descent.
This was a real disappointment, coupled with a hundred and odd quid down the pan and following this latest injury setback, my running had an uncertain future and certainly no bigger a foreseeable goal than just being able to go out and trot a few grateful miles again. My previous job had entailed a lot of heavy lifting and back trouble was nothing new - but strangely perhaps my back was missing the lifting since I switched jobs? Or maybe crash-training with repetitions on Pendle's Mearley Clough had tweaked something? Either way, it was another stride backwards.
From mid-October to date, alas some encouraging signs. Scratching up a couple of low voltage twenty five mile weeks together without much inconvenience from the offending back or Achilles tendon departments. I looked at November as a chance to build up the mileage further. No race goal as such, but with a Brooks running shoes seminar to attend in London on the 24th of the month, the only logistical travelling arrangement to do it in a single day was a car-train-run-run-train-car relay. I built up the miles preparing for this day. I didn't particularly want a stopover, so planned out this option which, to a runner was entirely logical, but to the non-runner would seem ever so slightly insane.
Driving to Preston for a very early doors train to London Euston, from where I ran to the seminar venue at Lee Valley Stadium and back, via Camden, Holloway and Tottenham. 18.7 miles in all, and certainly the biggest day's mileage I'd done for a while. During the seminar we were treated to a workout with one of Britain's top distance runners, Sonia Samuels. Now I shouldn't blame Sonia, but more my own ridiculous enthusiasm... with over nine miles already in my legs that day, I got a bit overzealous in the stretch routines which Sonia was running us through. Blissfully unaware at the time, later on I felt fairly shackled to say the least when setting off for the return run to Euston which was also dark, wet, windy and pretty damn grim. Sonia showed us only 'static' stretches of which there were 'dynamic' versions to move on to. I think if I'd tried anything 'dynamic' I wouldn't have made it back for the train!
The Sonia workout seemed to hamper my progress for a couple of weeks. Although getting some steady running in, every run felt like a recovery plod. Hamstrings jabbed with sciatic shots in to my backside and knees wobbled around as if bereft of ligament tissue. Whilst I would never say stretching is overrated, over-stretching might be a bigger threat than not stretching at all, especially to a lazy stretcher such as myself. This was a very practical reminder of such. That supple Sonia lass was in a different league and must be in very fine nick indeed bashing those routines out every day.
Despite a couple of weeks for the effects of that long day in London to wane, I'd managed a reasonable 165 miles in November and ploughed in to December with the objective of eclipsing that total. By the seventeenth of the twelfth month I'd clocked up almost 75 miles which included some decent runs on the fells upon Darwen Moor and beyond. A bit of pace was naturally building up again and I guess you could say I had departed from square one and was starting to get a bit of a buzz for running again.
True to form of 2015 though, the buzz didn't last long. I'd felt really jiggered for a good few days and this feeling of being a complete wreck then extended to best part of a week. A fell run on the West Pennine Moors was pulled short after I just completely ran out of steam. I found myself shuffling up a perfectly runable track towards Cartridge Hill with nothing in the tank and ended up walking. ''Summat's not reet 'ere'', I recall actually saying to myself out loud.
I took a few days rest from running and then tried again with a few low tempo short runs just before Christmas, but the mojo was once again a no-go. I wasn't so bad in a Christmas Day jog with Sara, but then Boxing Day seemed to be the culmination of a fortnight feeling like crap. Temperature, headache, stranded on the sofa with barely the energy to flick the remote. It felt like bad hangover symptoms, but I hadn't touched a drop of drink. I did feel better the following day but decided to write off running until the New Year and give myself a chance to recover. With that, the running year ended as it had started - stuck in square one.


NEW HOPE
BEGINNING 2016...

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions as such, but there's no denying I sometimes see this time of year as a clean slate. Tentatively I set out to build up at least a month's worth of decent training and if successful was going to enter myself for the Three Peaks again when entries opened at the end of January.
At the time it seemed like a mad idea, but if I wasn't to make progress then sanity would prevail and I would refrain from such a commitment. As it turned out, I was running routine and regularity like I'd rarely run before. Positive influences beamed from the new workplace, be it a closer relationship to the ultimate running kit essential - running shoes - and also working alongside a runner of Ben Fish's calibre. I can't do the 80-100 mile weeks that Ben does and nor would I dare to even try, but it would be denial that his attitude to training hasn't rubbed off on me to some degree and given me an extra spur to keep battling on and believing I can get race fit again. The Fish puts the shifts in and when you realise how much, you can't help but question your own commitment.
I've never been big on running heavy mileage. Some runners thrive on it, but I've never really needed to do it and often more mileage has had a negative impact for me. I could argue with myself that since running the Three Peaks from 2010, I should have taken mileage more seriously in the Winter months. But my legs can only do what they can do.
Back to present day mileage stats and by the end of January I had run every day of the month. 197 miles of which a healthy mix of road, trail and fell was trodden. This smashed my previous record of consecutive running days which I suspect barely broke double figures. January was also just about my heaviest mileage month in ten years of running. With a minimum mileage day of three miles - replacing the notion of something formerly known as a rest day - I felt good and it was working. It was all about miles, miles and more miles, managing the nuisance Achilles tendon by avoiding the temptation to up the speed too hard.
All in all I simply had to enter the Three Peaks now. The Ben Nevis race entries were also up for grabs at the month's end and oddly, in the days leading up to consideration to enter again this year, my back sustained a bit of a tweak. Not enough to put me out of action this time, but it seemed that anything to do with Ben Nevis was an omen for a bad back. I decided against entering The Ben. Not because I actually believed in that omen, but because I neither want nor can afford the botheration of another late withdrawal. OK, so I've got a great month under my belt, but that doesn't make me indestructible all of a sudden. I just didn't feel confident enough about my fitness. I could see where I might be next week, next month, but not in eight months time and so decided not to commit to it. Three Peaks, yes. Ben Nevis, no.
More yawnworthy mileage statistics to follow may be of modest figures indeed to the many, but of some significance to me... February kicked off with a 44 mile week, followed by a 50 and then a big 60. In fact that week I had the most unusual bragging rights at work of having doubled the mileage that the Fish ran that week - although in fairness, Ben had been floored by the effects of a wisdom tooth operation.
I'd never touched a sixty mile week before and this included my 50th consecutive day of running which was coincidentally celebrated with a 22 mile slog home to Leyland from Clitheroe. I didn't pick the flattest route and with a constant headwind accompanied by some long periods of icy rain it was a good old endurance battle which just tipped over the three hour mark. The following day certainly challenged the 'run every day' mentality that I seemed to have become obsessed with, yet I somehow plodded out a three miler and the following week ran just shy of 50 miles to complete a second successive month of daily running and another monthly mileage record of 207 in a 29 day month. Pardon the stat attack again, there's every chance I might now have tipped my one reader over the edge.
Clustering a couple of ten milers in midweek, one on the fell and one on road, a bit of a mix around it, perhaps a higher tempo four miler and the now set-in-stone eight or nine miler on a Thursday night with my former Chorley Harrier teammate John Horrocks – this is the current weekly routine.
Johnners is seventeen years my junior, so it can only be good for me. I'm expecting him to start giving me a run for my money when he stops whinging about his shin splints and does the sensible thing of handing those forefoot-slappy Asics GT2000's over to the nearest shoe recycler. John running in those things is like a gazelle in steel toecap boots.
Entering March and the show goes on. I have races booked. Yes, races. Starting with the Podium 5K this Saturday evening on a flat multi-lap cycle track in Barrowford. Organiser Chris Barnes always attracts a small but high quality field at the Podium race and this will be my first crack at it. To be fair, my own presence will merely add exceedingly subtle depth rather than actual quality to the field.
Ten days ago I would have said I'd smash this one. Now I'm not so sure, but I'm trying not to get hung up about it. I haven't done any speed work to protect myself from potential Achilles flare ups and I've no chance of remotely touching my personal best for the distance. In my mind's eye a sub-18 will be job done and the more sub-18 I get the bigger the bonus. Anything over 18 minutes and admittedly I will be heading back West along the M65 a little disgruntled.
The day before then, and my legs are in bits as usual on a Friday evening. A three mile potter tonight will hopefully shift some lactic and well, tomorrow is another day. But for the first time in a long time, tomorrow is race day.