Not Quite the sock drawer

Needs no caption!

Had a walk up to Ashness Bridge this morning, really just to take this photo and to stretch my legs.
Its 2 weeks now without doing any running and its flippin frustrating, so in a bid to maintain a little bit of fitness a mate has lent me his turbo trainer, (cheers Sam) where im doing 2 x 20 mins reps each night - apart from last night where wine got in the way!

Last week I went out to watch the Buttermere Round road race. The 22 mile race was won easily by Ricky Lightfoot and it was good to see Howard Seal having a great race finishing strongly in 4th. Steve Angus was not too far behind, not bad considering its the furthest he has ran since April last year - tho I like to think I could of beaten him this year...............my chance gone now though!

Some photos are on my Flickr site

Ricky Lightfoot

Howard Seal

Steve Angus

Only kidding Steve!!

So two weeks in,  (one bedroom painted) leg still sore, hoping in another two weeks it wont be tender to touch and start a little bit of light jogging, but in the mean time the turbo trainer awaits and who knows I might be as good as this dude by the end of if it....

Cheers Nick.

Stressed

For the last 4/5 weeks I have been troubled by a pain in my left leg, on the outside above the ankle. It hasn't stopped me running but it has been very tender to touch.

After the Pennine relays it was very sore, so I took 5 days off running.

On Saturday I met Steve Bennett and had a good fell run, covering 18 miles and over 3300 ft of climb. I felt good and felt strong after it and could easily of carried on, my leg was hurting, but no more then the last few weeks.

Sunday I foolishly met Steve Angus for a 9 mile road run which included 2x12 minutes hard. This Hurt, a lot, and I struggled to keep up with Steve on the second rep, but then again I would of struggled even without a sore leg!

During the afternoon it was tender and sore even when I was sitting down and decided I would make an appointment with Ray Pescod, whom I got see today.

He confirmed my worst fears - Stress Fracture.

I cant say that I was surprised, as I have had a hairline stress fracture before on my other leg in exactly the same place , but what did surprise was that he thought it might be healing because he could feel a very small lump where he thought the bone was moulding again.

The last time I carried on running though until I could hardly walk before I got it seen to.
The last time I kept trying to run before it was fully healed.
The last time I was out of running for 10-12 weeks.

Ray told me no more running at all on the roads, but said that I could do 3-4 mile of very light jogging on grass twice a week, but I have decided to stop altogether until the pain/tenderness has disappeared altogether. I'm hoping if I do this I might be running again in 5-6 weeks. A real shame and I cant pretend that im not pissed off, I am, but I have got to be sensible.

It  means that I will miss Buttermere Round this Sunday and Haweswater Half next month, both events that I was hoping to set PBs in.
Hopefully I will be fit for the 3 peaks in April, fingers crossed.

It also means that I wont have owt to blog about so things might go a bit quite on here for a while.

A friend of mine who blogs was out of running for 8 weeks and continued blogging.
One day he blogged about his sock drawer!!!!!!!
I will try and resist such temptation!

Also Sue thinks she is getting the house decorated!!!

Happy running !

Pennine Bridleway Relays

First time Eden have entered this event, but im sure it wont be the last. No better event for uniting the club road runners and fell runners for a thoroughly enjoyable day.

We managed to field 2 teams of 10 and both teams did themselves proud, especially as most of us hadn't a clue what to expect.

The team I was in consisted mostly of fell runners and the first leg was ran superbly  by Anth Labram and Sam Ware who passed over to Kim Collison and Carl Bell in a fantastic 14th place. A fantastic start.
Kim and Carl did what we all hoped they would do and ran a solid leg, passing over to myself and Alex Davies in 12th position, a gain of 2 places.

Sam and Anth- leg 1

Carl and Kim- leg 2

At the finish

Because me and Alex didn't have a clue of the route we were hoping that they would come in with another team near them, so we could sit on their shoulders and follow them. They did.....Borrowdale!

So we set off with Borrowdale only seconds ahead. We had promised each other that we would work as a team and pull each other along if the other was struggling, I cant understand why some runners run so far ahead of their partner only to wait for them at the checkpoint!

We both had strong runs and we soon caught and passed Bowland with a Clayton team not far ahead.
Luckily for us tho Borrowdale missed a tight turn and carried on thus taking Clayton with them costing them both a good minute.
We had one big climb left and soon passed over to Andy Thompson and Jon Toombs in 9th place and very relieved.

Andy and Jon ran strong on leg 4 and held on to 9th place to pass the dibber on to Gary Johnson and Mark Bissell, who had the tough task to bring us in.

After a anxious wait they emerged through the school gate neck and neck with Bowland.
A sprint finish and a confused marshal saw us finish the day in 12th position out of 104 other teams.
Our other team had by all accounts a brilliant day and all are looking forward to it again next year.
Results