London Marathon

Up & Down (again)

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76 days to go…

As is befitting for someone with my condition, the last couple of weeks of training have been up and down. A 34 mile week, then 6 days off with a strained quad, then 30+ miles again, topped off by a fairly quick 15 miler yesterday.

The 34 mile week was a particularly good one, with a strong hill sprint session on Tuesday, and a beautiful, life-affirming Sunday morning run up into the Cotswolds.  Icy and clear, through a nature reserve, across fields and  on quiet country roads.  Along the way I spotted a muntjac (not my first running experience with a deer), and was worryingly followed overhead for a little while by a buzzard.

I also did part of the route with another runner, which never would have happened in London.  Like on the Tube, you don’t talk to strangers in the city while out running, whereas here it seems to be mandatory to talk, or at least say hello to others out on the road or trails.

Although that other runner was the cause of my six-day injury layoff.  We met near the bottom of a steep hill, and we were so busy chatting that I didn’t notice how fast we were going.  It was only after she revealed at the top of the hill that her next race was the National Cross Country Championships that I realised that I’d pushed it far to hard.  We went our separate ways not long after, but by then the damage had been done.

Still, the one benefit of the injury was that it allowed me to try out my new training strategy.  Unlike in previous years, where I had a meticulously structured training plan and obsessed over keeping to it, this time I’m just going to listen to my body, push it harder when I feel up to it, but also give myself time to rest if it’s not feeling right.  So far it’s working.

My fundraising has also started to gather pace. I’m now just under £900, with plenty of time left until race day.  If you would like to donate, please follow the link https://team-mq-london-marathon-2017.everydayhero.com/uk/updownrunner.

It Starts

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97 Days to Go

After three weeks off and a typically over-indulgent Christmas period, the hard work has begun, as I’m now two weeks in to my London Marathon training. Last week was slow, but I managed to do 30 miles this week, including a hill sprint session and an icy 11 miler along the river yesterday morning.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the lack of damage caused by yuletide festivities, so all in all I’m off to a promising start.

I’ve also started my fundraising drive for MQ, so if you would like to sponsor me please follow this link.  If you do, you will help fund critical research into a wide range of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism and PTSD.

Many of MQ’s research projects relate to young people, including its latest study on the link between bullying and mental health.  Despite the fact that, on average, three children in every class have a diagnosable mental health condition, 7 out of 10 young people do not get sufficient help.

In terms of my own issues, the most interesting statistic is that 75% of those with a mental health condition start developing it from an early age.  It is thought that bipolar (if that is what I have)  can have genetic, biological and environmental factors, so it may be that I have always had it, was always going to have it, or some biological pre-disposition may have been triggered by one or a number of life events.  It certainly became more of an issue after I had my first child, but I’ve always had the feeling that there was something not right with me.

With hindsight, it is tempting to attribute certain feelings or actions to mental illness (in fact, I tend to use bipolar as an excuse for every time that I’ve acted like a dick), but I guess there is no way of knowing for sure.  I definitely should have received medical help before I did, but how early?  Could the breakdown have been predicted, or even prevented, and if so when? The latter seems unlikely, taking into account another MQ statistic – that on average it takes 10 years for an accurate bipolar diagnosis, so I’ve still got a long way to go.

By donating to MQ you can help answer some of these, and many many other important questions on mental health issues, so here’s the link again.