I’m still whispering it quietly, crossing my fingers, touching wood, saluting magpies and watching out for black cats crossing my path but, since my last update, the treadmill running has gone pretty well.
With four, one-minute interval run:walk sessions under my belt, yesterday I caved to the temptation to push it a bit more, upping the running interval to five minutes and increasing the speed a little. Today, bored by the prospect of returning to a sensible one minute run, one minute walk, I decided to play it by ear and ended up with 1 minute, 11 minute, 5 minute and 4 minute running intervals, at the quicker pace, which also means I’ve now run my first continuous mile since January. Woohoooo!
Despite that progress, the 30 mins cardio + regular lunges, step ups/downs/sideways, quad sets and straight leg raises are getting pretty boring so I’ve been looking round for a new challenge to keep me focussed.
When we first suspected that the original ACL reconstruction had failed, I was advised to stop running and start cycling instead – an activity that I hate (okay, that’s a bit strong but I do find it tedious, to say the least). To get myself through two months until my exploratory surgery, I found my focus by deciding to cycle the equivalent distance from my (then) home to the Scottish island of Iona (around 320 miles) on a static bike. The scenery was literally breathtaking…!
Anyway, the aim was to raise money to help families whose children had severe plagiocephaly and/or brachycephaly to fund corrective helmets that aren’t available on the NHS. That motivated me to keep my fitness up over the next two months and we raised over £1500 in the process – result!
So, here I am, looking for a similar challenge to keep me motivated but, most importantly, without pushing things too far too quickly. While looking at facebook over the weekend, I spotted that a friend is taking part in a fundraiser for the Alzheimers Society, asking people to raise £100 by running 100km over whatever timeframe they like this summer.
I know lots of people dealing with this b1tch of a disease at the moment – and lost my Grandmother to it too. The sooner we can find treatments that manage the symptoms – hell, even a cure – or, at the very least, find ways to fund the care sufferers require fairly (no, that doesn’t mean falling foul of a health lottery that decrees care for some end-of-life conditions will be paid for while you have to sell everything you’ve worked for to fund care for others), the better.
So, all in all, it’s a perfect cause, a flexible challenge and I’m up for it.
Depending on how the knee reacts, some sessions will be runs, some will be run walks and others may even be on the cross trainer (if I really need to back off the impact work for a while) but one way or another I’ll get there.
My fundraising target is a modest £100. All donations welcome. In fact, why not sign up and take part yourself?!