“And don’t even think of running for a month”

Words no runner wants to hear, but at last a diagnosis. After my ongoing foot troubles were still, well, ongoing I finally cracked and went to visit my GP. She poked and prodded my foot, finding the exact very sore spot, and squashed my hypochondriatic fears about a stress fracture by telling me I don’t actually have any bones there. Well she’s the doctor I suppose. Tendinitis, possibly caused by my walking strangely with the planter fasciitis I’d had.

Like the last time I visited the Doctor’s a few years ago, she uttered the awful phrase “as we get older…” (this time it was followed by “…we take longer to heal” and I forgave her this because she confessed to being a frustrated, injured runner. Things got worse as she followed this with “and don’t even think about running for a month”.

Well I promised I wouldn’t run for a month, but not think about it? That’s harsh. No promises there…

Happy New Year!

As 2016 enters soggily in I thought, like so many other people, that I needed to think about the year just gone and the new year ahead.

2014 ended very sadly, with the loss of our old cat, Holly. We were so sad for so long. Even re-reading the blog post brought tears back to my eyes just now. However the year has ended with the kittens we got for our son’s birthday growing up and finally starting to get along with our beautiful Tabby boy.

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Three boys on one sofa. A Christmas miracle

House wise, I started the year painting throughout our new loft conversion, including inside the undereaves cupboards (that wasn’t easy!) We ended the year with myself and husband moved into our new upstairs bedroom. Daughter has pinched another room upstairs and also has her eyes on the Scalextric room next door … We still have more decorating to complete downstairs, but plenty of time in 2016 for that. We ate our Christmas dinner in 2015 in our redecorated dining room, over-illuminated after my husband came to the Christmas Shop I’ve been working in and discovered the Christmas lights all had 50% off. Maybe in 2016 we’ll finally have a dining table rather than having to carry the kitchen table through!

I joined a running club, attended the ‘Killer Tuesday’ sessions, made a lovely new friend and felt that my running was the strongest it had ever been. This probably resulted in me running my muddiest race ever, my fastest 5k and my fastest marathon. Unfortunately the two months I then spent working in a Christmas Shop turned me into a broken woman and I ran only a few times in the whole of November and December. This did include a parkrun with uber-parkrun tourist Louise, which was brilliant.

So the year is ending on a non-running note, but I’m sure as soon as I recover I’ll be back out there. In the meantime I hope to do lots of stretching and strength work to stop anything like this happening again.