FFS...

I'm beginning to get the familiar, almost comforting, sense of loathing normally reserved for my own shortcomings or particularly inept colleagues.

This time, it's the former that's the subject of my ire.

After injuring myself before London, I swore I'd make sure I didn't go through that again, so have spent most of the rest of the year trying to strengthen the knee with physio, exercises, and low impact things like cycling.

I started proper training good and early thanks to Sally so there was lots of time to build up to avoid too much pressure on it, and all seemed well.

But then, last week, the unwelcome niggle crept back into my life like an acquaintance from school you never really got on with, and creeped you out a bit when they kept appearing uninvited wherever you went.

So it's a few days rest, ice, knee strap back on and some mashing with a tennis ball to try to get this infernal limb into some sort of workable state.

There's still the thick end of 18 weeks to go (just 124 short days) so I'm hoping that this is just 2009 giving me one last kick before it get's filed into the 'crappy years I need to forget'.

First fart tomorrow

It was bound to happen - as inevitable as southerners making a massive fuss about a little bit of snow.

Ever since I started this running lark it was clear, at some point, I'd have to have a go at "speed play" or, as it's more amusingly (to my juvenile mind) called: fartlek.

Tomorrow is my first session of farting - 40 mins of giving it a bit of welly for a bit, then jogging for a bit, then giving it some more welly, etc.

So, given my lack of discipline, I predict I'll do one longish one to start with, then lots of shorter ones as I gradually knacker myself out.

Even though I know I'll do it, it doesn't mean I'll recognise it and address the problem so I do it properly. I will try, but I know I'm an idiot so it's bound to go a bit wrong.

I put it down to my own special style of learning - I call it 'the hard way'!

And now, back to our feature programme...

One of the rules of successful blogging is apparently that you should never apologise for not posting in a while.

Some people interpret this as meaning you should post often to keep readers coming back, but for my own purposes, I choose to interpret it as glossing over my tardiness in a slightly flippant way.

So, non-apology over, what have I been doing?

A lot!

Sally - the personal trainer I won on Twitter - has had me doing a variety of fun things. Hill reps (gah!), intervals (double gah!), long, slow runs (bleugh!), and other fun things.

She's also been quite cruel about me using my bike so much (something about 'carb deficiency'...) but hasn't called me fat in a while - which is nice.

I had a crap few sessions last week, but had an extra day off yesterday as I gave blood on Monday. This gave me a chance to think a bit about my motivation (thespian that I am) and I realised I don't feel as enthused as I have in the past as I'm doing it by myself.

The double-ace joyness (real word (c) philrunslondon) of my last, albeit failed, attempt, was sharing the experience with others, and I don't think I'm there with it this time round.

So, I'm gonna be talking to myself/blogging more, and actively stalking others who are heading for Greenwich Park in April.

Expect nonsense, banality, crudeness and moaning.

You have been warned!

Marathon pain comparison

I'm not gonna lie - running a marathon is not a pleasant experience.

I've only made it round one, and it was horrible.

But, the ever-soothing passage of time helps erase these painful memories and allows you to convince yourself that it wasn't actually that bad, so why not give it another go?

That is why I tell people that whilst pretty much anyone can do a marathon with proper preparation, they shouldn't.

My thoughts drifted to this topic the other day as I contemplated the symphony of suffering I'd somehow composed for myself.

The dull, monotonous pain of the ceaselessly aching ribs I cracked underlining the ebb and flow of pain from the tooth now ripped from it's mandibular home. All this abbreviated with the occasional crescendo from the now absent distal phalanx from my left index finger as I forget it isn't fully healed and stub it on a range of one of the previously unrecognised obstacles that litter my life.

These musings - quite naturally I'm sure you'll agree - made me think that I needed to draw a graph comparing the different pains over time.

Obviously, for it to stand up to any kind of scientific rigour, you need to set some kind of parameters, so I've gone for a simple 0-10 scale for pain (with 0 being least and 10 being most).

Time is measured on a 0-20 scale, with 0 being the time the incident happened. But, 1 unit isn't necessarily a day. I've gone for 20 being more of an unarbitrary period of general suffering, and subdivided that.


Taking the marathon as a starting point, that hurt a lot at the time (0) and for a few days after, but subsided pretty steadily once I stopped doing stupid things like running.

Cutting my finger off with a table saw was, understandably, immediately more painful than the marathon, but that diminished rapidly and is really only an issue now when I bang it (not as uncommon as I'd like!).

The ribs were more of a bore - not as instantly painful, just diminishing less rapidly than I'd likeand pretty restrictive for things like moving and sleeping.

The tooth is all over the shop. Not the worst immediately, but ebbing and flowing over time depending on if bits are still falling out, whether I'm being operated on, or if I've bitten into something too enthusiastically and forgotten the no go area for solids in my mouth.

So, for all those people out there wondering how running a marathon compares to cutting off a finger, cracking a rib or smashing out a tooth, there's now a convenient graphical comparison.

All part of the service here at PRL Towers...

Pain is relative

Like the really annoying uncle you never want to visit

Regular readers will be giddy as a bunch of street drinkers in the Threshers sale to know I've managed not to accidentally hurt myself lately!

The key word being 'accidentally'.

I have had a minor operation to remove the remaining fragments of tooth that my ill-thought out attempt to stop myself falling from bike with my face didn't fully dislodge.

As ever, my trusty BlackBerry Storm was on hand to document the occasion.

This is my with the sexy glasses on, pre-anesthetic:


Don't know why it's so green, but I'm assuming I was shooting from inside Kermit the Frog.

This is me after they'd sliced into my gum and ripped out the root:


The white bit is the gauze I had to bite down on to stop the bleeding. Five seconds later this was pretty much solid red, and tasted warm...

This is the little blighter the dental profession were so keen to extract from it's natural place of rest:


Nice. Not at all like a maggot that has recently gorged on the inside of a rotten crow...

And this is the state of my gum:
There's just the one stitch in there, that will apprarently dissolve within two days to two weeks. I wish they'd trimmed the end a bit more as there's a dangly bit I keep playing with that's really annoying.

Sorry there weren't any of the actual yanking out, but the doctor and nurse didn't realise I was taking snaps until it was already out. They said they'd have been more than willing to take a few - gotta love the NHS!

So, I can tell you're wondering how, other than helping in my efforts to lose a bit of weight, this impacting on the training?

Not too badly really, other than time.There was a bit of excessive blood during some Sunday morning exursion, but that all seems to have calmed down now (apart from a sandwich incident yesterday lunchtime).

Also, now the ribs are less completely debilitating, I'm now able to get a few non-cycling miles under my belt. So this week will be a test of how this whole shebang has affected the running, and an indicator (for me at least) whether all the cycling has helped keep things from deteriorating into a steaming pile of uselessness.