This Week's Instalment of Nonsense

[PaulS83]

People always say, "Running is a one-legged activity", so I say, “explain to me then why the sport is so heavily dominated by two-legged people? Or why running shoes are so often sold in pairs. It's not like you can just pick one”.

It doesn’t make sense.

But, in this instance, I have to admit that I was wrong. Beside the wealth, nay! The shear embarrassment of riches that suggest this is indeed a two-legged activity, I have objectively concluded that, in fact, the left leg clearly contributes nothing. It’s like the back-half of a tandem bike when the front-half isn’t watching, or the humans in a bobsleigh team.

These findings come from an extensive study performed on a diverse range of runners (me) (I didn’t have time to ask anyone else). I understand that this will shake the sport to the very core, but tough truths must be told.

The revelation came from single-leg squatting, or more precisely, from the inability to do the ‘up’ bit of the squat on my left leg. I found there is no strength in there whatsoever, which is hugely imbalanced with the right and raised the question, what has it been doing all this time?

I’ve had several imbalance issues in the past that I blame on two things:

1) My legs are slightly different lengths. Not to a walk-round-in-circles or orthopaedic shoe degree, but enough to have been pointed out to me by physios. I try and explain that it’s because they were salvaged from two different cadavers.

2) Where I live is in a sh…bad state (nearly another pound in the HU swear-box there   linda9389 ). The pavements are heavily cambered, and the roads are utterly convex, meaning that running on an even surface is contained to a central spine, as narrow as a ridgeway.

My left hamstring had sneakily coiled-up and locked itself in some kind of rigor-mortis foetal position, like a dead rat. It didn’t even have the common courtesy to let me know it had died either, I had to find out mid-squat, tumbling to the ground shouting, “Up! I said upppp!”

No wonder I’m struggling if one half of me is beating the ground like a war drum and the other is lightly tickling it with a pink feather duster in an endless, cyclic: GrUnT! Neeeeeeheehee. GrUnT! Neeeeeeheehee. GrUnT! Neeeeeeheehee…

I’ve realised that when I bend down, I unconsciously let my left leg bend at the knee to take any stress off the hamstring. When I correct this: instant banjo.

Think me bent double, best side right up in the air. Think twanging banjo. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t mentally conjure: Deliverance.

I masterminded a pub-brawl like assault on it with targeted stretching, foam rolling, impact guns, and an array of verbal threats. I’ve got to say it’s responded quite well. You need to take a hard line with these things; all the other muscles were watching.

I’ve had a pretty good week all-in-all. I got my first full week of structured training since September in the bag. It was a big jump from my bimbling over the last few weeks and I certainly felt it, but all in the right places.

I completely overdid my Friday strength session though. My first mistake was saying “nope” when my alarm went off at 5am and frisbying my phone out of the bedroom door. I’ve made this mistake before, thinking meh, I can get it done in the evening, but that strips out all recovery time before Saturday morning’s run.

Plus I got bit over-zealous loading up the dumbbells. Another reminder that I’m not there at the moment. I need to scale it right back as my upper body is still full of the DOMS now, on Monday afternoon. As a result, I felt massively fatigued over the weekend, but I’m glad I got it all done.

My focus last week was to keep the easy pace easy, for which I give myself a 6/10. I definitely need to keep plodding away with that, but unfortunately It requires maturity and mental discipline, which aren’t my strongest suits. Give me chaos and winging it any day! I’m very impressed with   John_W on this topic. The, er, run management and consistency I mean, not the chaos and winging it. That’s mine.

Saturday mornings are the hardest runs for me in terms of pacing. During the week I’m out and back before the kids are out of bed, but Saturdays I give myself an extra hour-or-so sleep which ends up as being an extra three hours-or-so before I can even get near the front door.

These kids! They wake up and straightaway expect parental nurture. I’m starting to wonder why they bothered inventing TV at all.

When I finally get out, I’m invariably full of sugary breakfast cereal and caffeine; I’m fully awake, rather than semi-comatose as on weekdays, I’m crackling with energy and I’m telling myself to go slow. Pah! Throw into that mix legs that are tighter than tourniquets, as well as more dog walkers than what could feasibly exist on a single planet, plus morning-paper-goer-getters, plus modern day traffic crammed onto archaic village roads that are themselves being dug up like someone’s said “Pssssst! There’s long lost treasure buried somewhere round here. Could be anywhere in a five-mile radius, go nuts!” all of which doesn’t bode well for a nice, controlled light effort.

Then some car tsunami’d me right up to the shoulders with a deep gutter-puddle.

I can’t fully explain what happened without setting up a payment plan with the HealthUnlocked swear-box, but I shouted words I didn’t even think I knew, and I'm a pretty fluent swearer. I felt momentarily guilty when the little old lady up the road made eye contact with me, but she confirmed that he was a complete and utter w____.

Anyway, this week looks like this:

Monday

Rest. (Well needed!)

Tuesday

Intervals: 1mi warm-up, then 3x 1mi / 300m, 1mi cooldown.

Recovery on exercise bike plus mobility-focussed strength session

Wednesday

5mi (8km) at easy pace

Thursday

5mi consisting of 1mi warm-up, 3mi marathon pace, 1mi cooldown

Recovery on exercise bike

Friday

(Morning!) Strength session

Recovery on exercise bike

Saturday

5km easy run

Sunday

10mi to feel

The week after, I’ll probably scale it back for a bit more recovery, but we’ll feel it all out.

Happy running everyone! Very sad to hear about Kelvin Kiptum. We should all run sub-2 marathons this weekend in his honour.

[ktsok]

Do you know, no one has ever said to me that running is a single-legged activity. Who said this to you? When? At a dinner party? In the gym? Someone hopping past? My brain went crunch at this point and I wondered if you were being ironic. A quick google and I stand (on one foot, THEN the other) more knowledgable. (I’m still curious as to how this arises conversationally though.)

So you are lopsided! It’s weird how we don’t notice such glaring inconsistencies through running. These weaknesses are so obvious climbing - I used to get into positions regularly where a single leg squat was required without arm assistance and it was like the machines were switched off. Nada. These days, the hydraulics are on, but it’s a painful affair. So look at the positives - at least you have some twanging and responsiveness going on!

The tsunami driver made me chuckle. Jell had a similar experience this week and I very much enjoyed her colourful expression.

I hadn’t heard about Kiptum. That’s awful. What a talented runner…

Well done for getting back to plan. It looks quite a schedule to fit in with work and family life.

[PaulS83 Ultramarathon in reply to ktsok]

We probably just mix in different social circles. I know the guys at the Guild of Unipeds won’t shut up about it.

I am very lopsided. Probably comes as quite a shock. I’m really glad at how quickly I managed to cut through it though, it seems to be pulling its weight again already, but I’ll be building it up over the next few weeks.

Me and Jell both, huh. Was it you 🧐?

[Jell6 in reply to PaulS83]

You can use more colourful descriptions on garmin connect 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬I also think my left leg is only here in a supportive role! Just as well I'm not a flamingo!

[John_W Marathon]

Oh hello ... I've been Tango'd.

Thanks for the shout-out/honourable mention.

Lop-sidedness is very common, more than you think. I'm in my 3rd pair of custom-made orthoses since late 2014 and haven't look back since - a real life-changer. Expensive, but completely worth it. Physio took all of 2 minutes looking at me to show me what the problem was and that was... err... that. Referred me to her in-house podiatrist and off I pootled ... lop-sided, but not anymore.

My main thought reading all that though was, how on earth did this chap ever solve the problem that was W5R3?

[PaulS83 Ultramarathon in reply to John_W]

I enjoyed W5R3. All three times!

It’s just occurred to me that if I reverse my routes, my lopsidedness would sync with the cambers, and problem solved!

I’ve enquired about such insoles in the past. Could quite remember where the conversation ended. I shall enquire again, I don’t normally feel it until the mileage ratchets up, but I don’t think I’ve recovered well from my last escapade in spots.

[linda9389 Administrator Marathon]

That's better!

The energy I mean, the focus. No more mention of brain fog, peas or blows to the head. Hopefully because you feel better rather than some form of memory loss!

My left leg may as well not be there for all the help it is (and right now it's a definite hindrance) - maybe I should look up this one-legged running. It's not shorter than the other, but the first time a physio looked at it she laughed, got out a tape measure and proclaimed it about two inches smaller in circumference than the right (at quad height)! Having had knee issues in the past, I had been favouring the right leg for years.

Anway, great to see a week properly ticked off your plan, onwards for you ... off to google one-legged running for me ...

[misswobble Marathon]

I’m not sure why but it was Tony Hancock’s voice I heard when you described berating your tardy limb 🙂.

We all have a wonky thing going on but I blame it on nature rather than the cambered pavement. I live on a cambered street 😱 The dog is very sensible though and won’t walk up it for all the Bonio’s in China. That dog has the intelligence of Confucius🥰.

I have a weak left leg and weak right shoulder, so it sort of balances things out. I wouldn’t worry unduly.

Enjoy your running. I hope you’re getting back to fall health after your prang 🤕🙂👍