Hi everyone! It’s Ellen here, over from TeenRunner. In short, I’m a teenage runner, fitness-lover, and blogger who lives just around the corner from Grace, so naturally we often link up for runs, bike rides, and ridiculously hard gym classes (my stomach still hasn’t recovered from the last ‘abs attack’ session!). However, if any of you have been following me on Instagram (@teenrunnerblog) or Twitter (@teenrunnerblog) recently, you’ll know that two months ago I was diagnosed with a stress fracture on my second metatarsal. To put it simply, it was (and still is) a nightmare. Now, I understand that the mere thought of a stress fracture is a worrying prospect for ANY fitness enthusiast, and so reading about my experiences for the entirety of this blog post probably isn’t the best thing you could be doing on this Sunday morning…but I think you should give it a chance. Not just because I’ve written it (although that’s reason enough to continue), but because at one point everyone is going to be pushed down by an injury, so I want to give my opinions on rehab for you to bear in mind in the future. Phase 1- Acceptance This injury recovery process has been a roller-coaster ride. Metaphor yes, but I can promise you there’s no exaggeration here. Therefore I’m going to pick out a few aspects of the last two months, because even I don’t have the patience to go through everything…and I’m the one that’s actually got the injury! For the first two weeks, I found myself in a boot and unable to do anything aerobic. With tendon and muscular injuries, it’s true that you can cross train straight away. But with a bone…well you’ve got to let that have some complete healing time. Okay, so the boot did have its positives, but on the whole those 14 days were extremely hard for me. I’m used to being outside, going to the gym, heading out for a session, so when I was limited to basic arm and core work it took a LOT of getting useful. Taking this into consideration, the best way to deal with it is to accept the injury. Yes, I was angry, sad, frustrated at first (especially since I qualified for the English Schools the day before), but after a week or so I guess the process of recovery had set in. This may sound mildly insignificant, but it worked for me! I really did feel a pang of sadness every time we drove past the track, but I soon became focused on the beginning of rehab. Roll on Phase 2. Phase 2- The Long Middle Ground I’ll let you know now that I’m currently in phase two, so this is hot off the press. From four weeks onwards the doctor gave me the all clear to start cross training. As you would expect, I went a little crazy on this. Tuesday saw me racing up and down the pool, Wednesday on the spin bike, Thursday with the aqua-belt. But unfortunately my foot did not react too well. It hurt a little, and kept swelling up. Hence why I’ve now restarted the training programme again- it’s coming up to week 7 and I’ve only been managing about 40 lengths kicking at one time. I guess what I’m trying to say is that even when you think rehab will go smoothly, it quite often doesn’t. For example the week before last I had been spinning every day, but over the past few days I’ve had to stop as it has been aggravating the foot. Spinning is go-to option for most injured runners- but not for me. I’ve personally found the uncertainty really difficult. Truth to be told, I’m constantly worrying about my foot, and am always spending extra time at the gym to keep some level of fitness up. But it’s not all bad, I promise. I can’t wait to get back running, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed going to the gym. It has provided me with an aura of self-confidence, and it’s always reassuring to see yourself progress. Once I reached the stage where aerobic workouts were possible, things got a lot better! Phase 3- Heading into the unknown And here I reach the end of my scrawl. Phase three indicates the slow start to ‘proper’ training. The jogs, the elliptical, and of course, at one point the training session. I’m a good five weeks away yet, but I do know that when I return it will be very gently. Injuries don’t last forever, and if any of you are unfortunate enough to be suffering with one at the moment, I bet that you’ll be a thousand times stronger (both mentally and physically) when you return. Good luck! I would just like to say a huge thank you to Grace for letting me write on her website. If you do fancy following me, the links are below. Grace’s Sunday post is up on my blog right now- definitely worth a read!
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Here's a bit of a different post to normal, the last few months I have had race after race, throughout the xc season, and I will be back to that when track and tri season are full in swing. As most of you all know, English schools was this weekend and I had been hoping for the last two weeks, that I might slid in a be able to get a spot if someone pulled out, but unfortunately I didn't quite make it, but I have to remember that Kent is a very strong county for xc runners and they actually intact one the team event yesterday, which is amazing and I am so proud of all of those in the team. This year was my first time trying for english schools, and next year is the last year I can try, so the pressure is on for next year, so I will have to really work hard all year to make sure I am in top fitness for next xc season. However this week I have been very busy with all sorts, on Tuesday I had a relay race up in Oxford and I was on the first leg and brought us in to the change over as first girls team. Overall we came 2nd, which we were really pleased with. The course was 2.7km and it was pretty fast and flat, however there were some random sharp uphills/ downhill bits. It was a good afternoon, but I can't say the 2 hour journey there and back, was that great... but I got some work done at least. Wednesday meant circuits, which was a seriously sweaty affair, but it was really fun. I really enjoy circuits because its a bit different to just the usually running session and I know it has been a good session when I fall asleep straight away that night and I sure did that night! Whats great about this session, it benefits not just my running, but my swimming and cycling too. After the session we just had to get a group photo, because we all ended up turning up in our pink tank tops. Tri training is currently in full swing and I am planning my season of racing at the moment. Trying to squeeze all of the track races in and the tri races, is definitely going to be a tricky one!
So back to the focus of the blog post, as the title says 'dealing with disappointment.' Yes for sure, I wish I had got through to English schools, but actually I am just pleased I have come out of my injury, which I had 2 weeks off for and I now feel I am back to business. This summer, I have some important tri races I want to make sure I complete to the best of my ability and hopefully have as few disappointments as possible. This will also be my first season of track and I am so excited, to have a go at a few of the events and hopefully find which one I am really keen for. I have also booked my flights for Slovakia in May, when I am competing for GB for the first time, which I am so so excited for! G x This weekend I don't have a race which seems like the first time in a while, so it has been quite nice to get some training in. I thought I should write a little catch up at the beginning of this blog post, considering the last few weeks I have just been talking about all my races and not really whats going on. Especially if you were all up to date on my Instagram that I was injured for 2.5 weeks. After having 2.5 weeks off injured I came back to running a few days before Nationals. This week, I have got in my first few sessions for a while and can feel I've lost some fitness over the two weeks, but I guess that has to be expected. I ended up playing a netball match yesterday, which was great fun as I played a lot last year, but haven't really played for about a year. Although someone stood on my toe and now it is all bruised and swollen....oops. On Thursday we had our school XC dinner which was a great evening and I had a salad which was delicious, it had butternut squash and chicken in which was super tasty. There were also some awards and I was so please to get 'most improved,' and find myself with some new blue elastic laces, which I love. I missed club training on Thursday so instead after school my friend and I headed to the park to hit out a session, which was tough but great fun. Although my drop in fitness did really show, but it has just motivated me more to keep training hard to get it back. Anyway actually on to my XC season, I won't bore you with every single race but I would like to mention a couple: Firstly my first ever XC race for Tonbridge AC and first ever Kent XC League: Stanhill Farm. I went into this not really knowing anyone around me, or how I'll race, so I just went for it. I came in 13th which I was actually really pleased with, but to be honest I wasn't really sure how good this was. But more importantly this is where my love of XC started and why I am still loving it today. National XC Relays: Mansfield This was my first ever Nationals race, and first time that I got to go uptake night before and stay in the hotel, which is all very exciting! I remember this race well, but I didn't run very well. It was a 2.5km course, which was pretty short for me and I struggled to get the speed. I was the last runner of our relay team and took over in 5th and came back in 8th. The only bad thing about relays are that you feel bad if you don't have the best race. Mansfield was a really good experience and I can't wait to come back and do it again at the end of this year. Senior Knole Run, this was just great fun, it was our home race for school and what made it better was that it had snowed a few days before so the park had snow everywhere, which made all the photos great! The girls senior team came first, which was amazing and I was happy with an individual place of 17th. This was a seriously hilly course, and I am pleased I gave it my all and came out the other side. SE Inter-Counties was of course going to appear on my list, it wasn't just my best race of the season but it was also my first ever time representing Kent, so there were lots of positives to take away from this race! It is always nicer to go back to a familiar course, which was perfect about Brands Hatch as I had raced there just a few weeks before. This is the race which hopefully will get me into the English Schools team, but I am just going to have to wait and cross my fingers. And finally Nationals, even though I had a pretty terrible race, I had such a good weekend as a whole, and the whole experience was amazing. It was definitely my first experience of getting properly wet and muddy, helped by the fact there were 3 rivers... I didn't have the perfect build up to this race, but thats just how things work out sometimes. I am looking forward to getting back to Nationals next year and giving it a better shot. I hope you have enjoyed my round up of the season, and this also makes the end of it. I was hoping that I might get a place in the English Schools team, but I still haven't heard, but I am hoping maybe it there is a couple of withdrawals, but I currently don't know what reserve I am. I hope you have all had a good week,
G x So last weekend was Nationals, yes I'm sure lots of you already know this probably because you either raced it or were bombarded with photos on Instagram from it. On the run up to Nationals, I had been very busy and had an intense week at school, as I had got back from Boston on the Tuesday and had been given piles of homework following this, oh and not to mention the fact I was still injured, wasn't helping the stress levels! I was eventually given the all clear to run on the Thursday before Nationals so I was quick to get down to my club for an easy run in preparation for nationals. It got to Friday and I was feeling pretty stiff following only an easy run the day before, but I knew I was better off running on the Thursday and perhaps being stiff on the Saturday, than going into Saturday not have run for 2.5 weeks. Straight after school on Friday, I quickly made my way down to the coach meeting point, to be picked up by the coach up to Nottingham. The coach journey was about 4 hours, so my usual dinner was altered slightly... well it was just cold and in a tubberware pot, and it was followed by some little snacks. We arrived at about 8:30pm at the hotel and I went pretty much straight to my room to sort all my kit out for the next day and soon enough I found myself in bed, trying to get to sleep. I can't say I had the best night sleep, the bed was hard and I just felt quite uneasy so when I woke up, I felt like I had pulled an all nighter partying. Anyway off I went to breakfast with my little microwaveable pot of porridge and I politely asked the waiter to microwave it. However I had clearly not seen the big pot of porridge on offer, from the buffet breakfast and was bluntly told by the man working there, that the hotels porridge was better and there is no point him going off to microwave mine. I quickly demolished my bowl of porridge with the toppings of nuts, seeds, banana, granola and some honey - it was very tasty to be fair to the waiter. Soon enough we were on the coach on the way to the park, for everyone's race but mine was the first one, which was 11:00am. I jumped off the bus and the group of us quickly went to walk the course, which was a small lap then a medium lap. When we walked the course we soon realised that there were some obstacles we had to get through... aka a river/swamp which was knee high in places and it did not smell very nice at all! However I was thankful for the fact that the course as a whole was not very hilly. After my warm up, with stretches and drills, we were all hurried along through a tent and out into our pens on the start line. I knew Nationals was a big race but looking down the start line, it seemed that there were endless amounts of people, which turned out to be just short of 300. The start was very quick as everyone started charging down the first straight. It was very busy and I was running about 6 people a breast. But trying to get around the corners was tricky and I found myself either get caught in in the middle and getting cut up, or going around the wide way of a corner... not ideal. The first small lap went relatively quickly but my legs felt pretty unresponsive and I just couldn't seem to get my teeth into the race. I was struggling to pick out people I knew, who were my sort of pace to hang onto, but I ended up just sort of running with the people around me and not pushing on forwards. This theme didn't really change and as I got to halfway around my second lap and this is when I have started to push the pace normally nothing really happened. At this point I was absolutely covered in mud, pretty much from head to toe. My feet weighed double as they did to the start and as I was charging through the last swamp, I made the mistake of slowing down slightly and that was just the worst thing to do as I found myself just sinking into the mud even more and was reduced to almost a walk. I eventually crossed the finish line in 140th, covering the 5km course in about 22:55... and I have one word to describe that and that is a 'disaster.' It might sound weird for me now to turn around and say that I had great fun, for the day as the whole, but I certainly wasn't happy with my run. This was my first Nationals and also the end to my first cross country season, and it is fair to say I have had great fun. This weekend, I will be looking back and reflecting over the end of the season. After the race I was very very muddy, but I still had the whole day of supporting everyone else at the club, so I hurried up to like a farmyard area, where I found a hose. Yes a hose, and yes it was absolutely freezing but I did manage to wash most of the mud off my legs and then I quickly ran into the toilets and put my legs under a hand dryer to warm them up. For the rest of the day my friends and I cheered on all the other age groups and at the end of the day we got to watch the senior men, which was pretty incredible. There were just under 2000 men running and when they all started charging past us, it was really cool, and also unbelievable how quickly they were going, especially because their course was 12km. We got to cheer on our coach too, which was great fun chasing him around the course to make sure he heard us on each lap. Amazingly the TAC senior men won the team race, which was the first time this had happened, which is so good and the whole club was so so happy when we found out! On the Saturday evening we had the end of season dinner, which I had been excited for, for ages as it was a chance to swap the wet, muddy spikes for heels, which is always nice every now and again. We had a sit down meal and there were awards and speeches, which were really great to hear, especially as I am a newbie to the club and I got to know some of the other people at the club better too. Overall I had a great weekend, and won't be forgetting it for a long time. Sorry this post is a bit late, but because I was so busy all weekend, I didn't have the chance to write this post as I had to spend most of my Sunday either travelling back from Nottingham or catching up with missed work from Saturday school and homework.
I hope you all have a good week! G x |
HelloI'm Grace, a 18 year old runner, and fitness fanatic. Join me on my crazy journey through life, squeezing in an adventure in every second of spare time I have. Archives
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