Week 14 and beyond: Unhappy New Year
Well 2025 sucks
It’s 8th February 2025 as I type this, the eve of the Farnborough half marathon. I haven’t written anything about running since New Year’s Eve and I barely remember writing that. In fact I’ve almost forgotten how to type. I mean, OK, that’s not true, but what’s true is that typing is more difficult than it used to be. We’ll come to the reason shortly I guess. But anyway. Here I am. What do I have to say?
The end of 2024
On 30th December I ran 8km. What I cared about the most at this point was continuing my streak of “no breaks of longer than one day”, and also reaching 100km for the month – my benchmark for whether I’m happy or not. And I was. Looking back at what I wrote on Strava, I recall being utterly exhausted yet stumbling through 8km at target half marathon pace. Good. So long, 2024.
2025, then
New Year’s Day
My local Parkrun wasn’t on on New Year’s Day, I knew that in advance. It’s one of the several reasons I had much too much to drink as the year started. The weather was horrendous and I felt rotten. Still, the streak doesn’t let up so I ran 3km in the afternoon. Garmin gave me a “strong start” badge, for running on 1st January. You can only earn it once per specific 1/1, but apparently 250 times in total. That’s … optimistic.
3rd, 5th, 7th January
Either the weather was terrible, or it was forecast to be terrible and ended up not being. Anyway. Each run slower than the previous, and none of them longer than 5km.
9th January
Brutal, and I mean brutal, cold. I managed 1km around the perimeter of two muddy cricket pitches. I was pleased enough to have even reached the grass without going arse over tit on the crazily icy pavements. Couldn’t feel my fingers throughout despite being in my warmest running outfit I could muster.
11th January: Parkrun 396 (and warmup)
Even colder, but no wind. Instead, gorgeous winter sunshine. So when Smashrun told me it was literally the coldest run ever, I didn’t actually believe it. But, I mean, it was bastard cold. I actually really enjoyed those runs. Sunshine works wonders.
13th January: the streak is over
FINALLY, the streak was done. 13th January 2025 marked 99 days of at least alternate day running, i.e. never two rest days in a row. It was not easy and I didn’t feel great about it, but I was glad to get the self-inflicted monkey off my back. Sadly, I also got really angry at the verbiage of the Smashrun badge – all full of nonsense profundity and stuff that just left me colder than Parkrun two days prior. Oh well.
15th January: wait, what?
Yes, didn’t take two rest days. I wanted to run. But looking back at Strava here’s what I wrote:
Feel like I’m on a death march to the half marathon which will be awful, and then I can maybe enjoy running again. Hopefully.
Let’s see about that shall we?
17th January: uh huh
A 5km in 26:24! Really pleased with that, I was. Even managed a sub-5:00/km split.
Went out for a few beers with some of my oldest friends that night.
18th January: Parkrun 397 plus warmup(s)
Got back late. Drank too much. Had a shit night’s sleep. You know, same old same old. Ran a 2km warmup, then another 1km, then struggled around Parkrun wondering – out loud, as I was running with Roger – just how on earth I’d managed to do this sort of thing 396 times before. It felt alien and beyond a struggle. Didn’t like it one bit.
22nd January: streak broken
Finally had a few rest days. Can’t remember why. Me being me I assume it was hangovers and shit weather, I dunno. Anyway, I ran 10km on the 22nd. The upcoming half marathon was really now starting to make me worried, distance-wise. I’d given up caring about pace, I just wanted to prove to myself that I had a chance of doing the distance. I’d booked a hotel, my bib had arrived, it’s all very real.
Didn’t help that I sprained my ankle, mind you. Not sure how. I was in quite a lot of pain and couldn’t walk brilliantly at the end. Great. Still, that’s happened before, it didn’t feel permanent. By the evening I was pretty much alright.
Man down
That evening Ocado were due with our weekly shop between 6-7pm. As usual, I went down to meet the driver and carry the shopping up. I like to be nice, our house is up a garden path with 34 stairs. I’m used to it. There’s no need to make the driver suffer. And anyway, there are idiosyncracies with the lights and stuff. I’ve done this tons of times. Literally, the only times I haen’t carried some or all the shopping up, in the 4 years I’ve lived here, is if they’ve arrived early and caught us by surprise.
Anyway, on the last mini-flight of stairs while I’m carrying about 7 carrier bags split between both hands, my fingers curled all around the handles… I trip over. Hard. My left knee smacks straight into the corner of a step, and my right hand, tangled up in carrier bag handles and stuff, well I can’t throw my hands out to protect myself. The hand gets yanked around and smacks into concrete and gravel. I shout and swear very loudly. Helen comes rushing out of the house.
I go and sit inside on the bottom of the staircase. She sees the driver off then comes in to attend to me. I’m shaking and in agony. There’s blood dripping on the floor. My little finger looks mis-shapen to me, and I dread to think what’s going on with my knee.
We have a first aid kit. Helen patches me up and we make a makeshift splint by snapping a nail file in half and strapping it to my finger with a bandage. Two other fingers are bleeding too, not as bad though. My knee is extremely painful, but when we examine it it seems mostly surface level. Trousers helped.
The end
So that’s that. It’s currently February 8th and I haven’t run since. It took me a few days until I could walk pain free. My finger still won’t fully bend. We went to minor injuries a few days later because it was suspiciously still more painful than we expected. They took x-rays, it wasn’t broken but the tendons is what I’d damaged and they can take weeks to feel better. I got a proper splint and told to keep on the painkillers. I’m right handed and half my right hand is out of normal action, hence my inability to type as well as usual. Albeit, I mean, look, I’ve reached here so clearly I can type OK.
But I am fucking miserable. I wish I was in Travelodge Farnborough tonight and running a half marathon in the morning. Instead I’ve not run at all for 2.5 weeks. Averaging under 4000 steps a day. Kinda scared to run again, just because, well, my ankle and then my knee and then not being able to hold my phone or my hand in a natural way … and because the next time I run it’s going to fucking suck. And the weather has been dogshit the whole time too!
I should be loving the fact it’s light at 7am again, but I’m not. I don’t get up early, I don’t run, I just feel miserable. Pretty much everything about this half marathon has been a disaster since I started this mini-blog and I finish unfit, injured, depressed, unmotivated, just all the negativity.
So, y’know. Thanks for reading ’n that. Don’t think I’ll be doing this “blog the period until a race” thing again.