Still have purpose, but no more running

I posted this on another blog by accident, so if you've seen it before, my apologies - my brain isn't working so well these days:

Running and my brain:
Back in November 2012 I was diagnosed with brain cancer - an oligodendroglioma - after an enormous seizure.  After three operations I am now, effectively, epileptic.  And I still have some weakness  on my left side - as a result of my first operation.  I had to learn how to walk again, and I still can't run, sadly, although there are a great many things I can do.  Perhaps I now am more aware of them.  For example, I have been able to touch type for decades.  It took a bit of practice, and I can do it, though not as fast as before.  Luckily, my speech and reading ability are not impaired.  Another slight downside of my condition is that, having managed to give up eating "junk" carbs like Rice Krispies and sugar in my tea and coffee.  I felt a strong wish to start consuming them again in hospital.  I sort of felt that after all I'd been through, I might as well indulge myself - after all, the point in giving them up was to save my brain, and I felt I'd rather lost that battle.  I can always give them up again if I want to - I have managed to avoid putting sugar in my drinks, though giving up sweet and "junky" foods is proving a little harder.  Most of my brain is still intact and functioning - though there's room for improvement.  Part of me is somewhat indignant that after all my efforts to be good to my brain, I ended up with a brain tumor diagnosis.  Though I am daily grateful that it wasn't worse - it could have been one of my family instead.

Purpose:
I still care a great deal about research into Alzheimer's Disease.  I lost my father to complications arising from Alzheimer's late last year, while I was still in hospital myself.  I hope that by raising funds for Alzheimer's Research UK, some breakthrough  will be funded that will spare others this sort of loss.  However, I can no longer run, so raising funds through the London Marathon is no longer a realistic option. I am working on an alternative.

Measurement technology

Today I ran a 7K route, about half of it on farm tracks, in about an hour.  This gives me a theoretical marathon time of 6.5 hours - an hour off my target.  Of course, I couldn't really run a marathon at that speed right now, but it gives me an idea of the speed I could expect if I could build my endurance.

The route tracks some roads that used to be "real" roads before the M4 plowed through the village in the 1960s. They are lovely lanes, lined with hawthorn, sloes, rosehips and blackberries - I should go back and do some gathering for hedgerow jelly!

I've been using Endomondo to track my runs - it's a phenomenally useful app, and of course you get all you really need in the free version.  I recommend it highly to anyone who cycles or runs!  I've also been using Richard's Adidas micoach, which tracks my heart rate and run time (it would also track my pace, but unfortunately I've lost the bit that does that - but that's fine because Endomondo does it in speed terms, rather than real pace - which is practical).  I'm in two minds about the micoach - on the one hand, it's really useful for what it does at the moment, but on the other hand, you can't just buy one bit of it - if I want the pacer back I have to buy a whole new unit - wasteful and shameful!  Adidas ought to allow purchases of the individual components as part of their efforts to be more sustainable.

I like the fact that I can save runs on Endomondo - the next step will be to run the same route from time to time and try to improve my speed.  I've also been trying to work out a safe 10K route from home without too many hills, but as Richard has remarked in the past, the problem with living as high above sea level as we do is that virtually everything is down.  Actually, that only applies to the west, where you soon get to the "Cotswold Edge", a sharp drop into the Severn Vale from the plateau that extends to our east.  My run through Tormarton was of course eastward, taking advantage of the flattish Cotswold landscape.

One alternative for flat routes is to drive down to the common in Old Sodbury, as that has plenty of quiet(ish) roads that are reasonably flat.  The only thing I don't like is that there is relatively little off-road running that isn't impossibly muddy.  The common is just a huge bog - that's probably why it wasn't included in Yate.  At any rate, it just doesn't feel right to drive 4 miles in order to go for a run.

When in Rome...

...or as it may be, in France.  I was there last weekend, attending a reunion of my MBA class at INSEAD in the beautiful town of Fontainebleau.  Of course, it rained - why on earth do they hold these things in October?

You only live once.

At any rate, I had a dilemma.  We were going by train and bringing all my running kit would require another suitcase (or a bigger one at any rate), which I'd have to lug across London, Paris, and Fontainebleau.  And what should I eat?  There were gorgeous cakes, dinner menus full of things I shouldn't eat... was it going to be a complete wash out in health terms, or was I going to exercise a little willpower?

Well, I decided that I don't get presented with such fabulous food very often.  And I didn't want to carry yet another suitcase.  I settled on the happy rationalisation that it was an experiment to discover the consequences of a "weekend off".

And in some ways I've been pleasantly surprised.  Granted, I did gain several pounds, all of it as fat.  After all that food I needed a serious detox, so I've been consuming large quantities of black coffee and green tea all day, plus raw veg and unadorned fish.  By the end of the day my body was feeling like me again.  Easy come, easy go.

Moreover, I finally went for a run, for the first time since leaving for France!  I feared the worst, but in fact it was an excellent run - only slightly slower than my fastest endurance run so far, and faster than any run last week.  My legs were hurting in unfamiliar places, but apart from that it was progress rather than retreat.

I do not plan gluttonous weekends on a regular basis, but it is at least somewhat reassuring to find that skipping a few sessions and eating unwisely doesn't set me back significantly on my training plans.

Before I begin: the research period

So if you knew you needed to run 26.2 miles in 29 weeks' time, what would you do first?  Get out and do some road training?  Not if you're me you wouldn't - you'd go online and start reading up. 

I checked PubMed for interesting medical research on long distance running.  I looked up marathon training programmes and advice, and scoured the Virgin London Marathon magazine for helpful information (mostly it contained ads).  Once I'd done all this, with varying success, we headed for the bookshops of Bath.  We decided to give Toppings a miss - just because it's at the top of town, so we'd either be carrying books up and down the hill or would have to climb the hill a second time.  Granted, with the marathon in mind, that shouldn't have bothered me, but there was my family to consider, of course.

So the first stop was the local branch of Waterstones, where the staff are friendly and the books are numerous.  There was nothing I really felt taken by, but I picked up a generalist book by Matt Roberts called Get Running.  It's not quite Dorling Kindersley, but it has attractive people (airbrushed?) in instructive photographs, and relatively straightforward content on how to start a running programme.

Mr B's understands the importance of a place to sit

Our next destination was our favourite independent bookseller outside London - Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights on John Street.  This is a book person's bookstore - an eclectic selection of whatever takes Mr B's fancy, carefully organised and displayed with many little notes about what the staff think of the books, spread out over 5 little rooms on three floors.  It is sort of an anti-Waterstones - tiny and personal, and full of many "perfect books" which are hard to pass over as you seek the sort of book you came in for, but which you couldn't have described until you'd found it.  And in the sport section I did indeed fine my book: Marathon Running: from beginner to elite, 4th edition, by Richard Nerurkar.  I'd never heard of him, but I'd heard of Haile Gebrselassie, who is quoted on the front as saying "if you want to run a marathon, or a faster one, you have to read this book!"   Well, I do, and I'm prepared to take his word for it.  So I have the book.

Now  armed with medical literature references, two books, a Runner's World magazine, and the beginnings of advice from friends and relatives, I feel ready to put my running shoes on.  Not that I've read everything.  I've dipped in, got the gist, made up my mind.  Sometimes, that's all research really needs to be.