Don't stop moving...

Cheers MJ. Totally agree progress is progress, still doing "new" things every day (e.g. today was taking E swimming for the 1st time since it happened).

So running just falls into that. I'm just delighted to be out of hospital and on a decent path to normality.

Week of 3rd January:

Started back to work, part-time, this week so carefully trying to manage that workload. Good week to come back, between our public holiday on Monday, and all sorts of Public Holiday's around Europe later in the week. Meant I was able to feel my way back into a bit (reset all my passwords etc!).

Second half of week came down with a head cold so that was that. Just the one run.

Wednesday; 4km at 4:55/km:

Cold lunch run, but nice (ish) to be out. Felt it in my lungs at end, which was a blow to the ego. But happy to be out on a sunny day I remind myself.

Week of 17th:

Well well well, a ground breaking week of running. Oh so tempted to throw my name in the DCM lottery as a target to have almost exactly a year on from the stroke, but think that would be one thing too many to load on myself. (he says now!! lol)

Was a good weeks running, back out with the buggy (and a small run with the double!), and did 3 "runs" in the week for the first time since my comeback.

Tuesday; 4.55km with buggy at 5:07/km

Putting this one in while E was at ballet. But more importantly, I took C out in the buggy. My 1st buggy Run back since the stroke so delighted to have another "1st". Oh, and pushing a 9 month old is so much easier than pushing a toddler!

General feeling was that last km or two was a bit harder given it was uphill and buggy.

Thursday; 1.3km with double buggy at 5:29/km

Totally not planned, as I said on Strava, it was a run because E was horribly late for preschool! But nice to be pushing the Double Buggy, even if I did have a slight bit of PTSD running with it.

Friday; 5km at 4:46/km (Comeback PB for 5km of 23:51)

I think I'm going to follow the concept of "Comeback PB's", it will stop me focussing on how slow I am compared to before and rather keep me positive about my (patient and slow) improvement back again. With that in mind I'm declaring this one as my new Comeback PB for 5km!

It wasn't an all out effort either, I planned to potter for 5km but felt light on my feet so threw in a few fartleks around a few pitches locally then finished with a steady effort to the 5km marker. So sort of an accidental time trial, with fuel in the bank too.

General health.

Much the same as last week, still on daily painkillers. But I also did a bit of a body check on my Tuesday run and I certainly didn't feel ready to put the foot down and accelerate (I did feel better on Friday though). The constant low lying headache is really a drag on my flow, and the thought of doing runs on back to back days is not one that fills me with too much comfort. Thus I certainly feel a natural limitation at the moment of max 3 runs a week.

Week of 24th:

Keeping it ticking over, I sometimes feel like an idiot logging ~10km per week. But such is life! lol. The weather has been unreal these days though, certainly makes it easier to get out, even got to double figure mileage this week…

Monday: 4km with buggy @ 4:54/km

A point to point run here, net downhill. Struggled to control the pace, the buggy was running away from me a bit the whole time. lol. It was E's first buggy run back and she was chuffed to be back out. Gave me plenty of smiles seeing how much she still enjoys a buggy run.

Wednesday: 5.3km with buggy @5:34/km

Another gorgeous day, another lovely run in company. ReeReeG and E joined me for some relaxed km's around Marlay. V did give out to me for dragging the pace down a bit though. Suspect she has a point. lol

Saturday: 4.8km with buggy @ 5:30/km

C was awake early so took him around the blustery block. Felt a little more sore on this one. Maybe cos it was before breakfast!

General Health:

Still taking painkillers, still hurting consistently. But running seems to be a neutral influence on that. I felt bad over last weekend, but not sure if that was the 5km Comeback PB on the Friday, work ramping up, or a bad nights sleep on Friday. It could easily be any, but most probably a little of all of the above.

A generally good 2 weeks actually, things are still moving in the right direction! Overall, I think I'm going to start putting a little more structure on things from now (health permitting of course). 3 runs a week, Tuesday/Thurs/Saturday;

Tuesday easy 5km

Thursday being a slightly longer one each week

Saturday, Parkrun 5km of whatever pace I'm feeling

So total will be 15km and growing slowly slowly.

Week of 28th

Wednesday: 5.1km with double buggy @5:10/km.

Wet and windy and fun this one, everyone was sick of being inside on a miserable day so off we went with wet wear on.

Saturday: 5km with buggy @ 4:52/km

It was E's turn to do Parkun at Marlay this morning, didnt get a free EV charging spot. grrrr.

Similar buzz to last week, just take the pace offered by the crowd in 1st km etc then enjoy the rest of the race at the pace that comes. It was a gorgeous crisp morning, splits were 5:34, 4:35, 4:54, 4:54, 3:55. Only just noticed that last split now, nice to do a sub 4 min km again. Didn't feel too bad either, But I definitely wanted to go sub 24 minutes when I realised I was at halfway in a little over 12 mins.

Week of 7th

Tuesday: 5km with buggy @ 5:02/km.

Pretty miserable school collection of E was this. Windy, Rainy, Hilly and E felt really Heavy! Glad to have it in the bag.

Thursday: 6.3km @ 4:55/km.

In total contrast to Tuesday, weather was scorching (relatively) so got out around the block on my own at lunch. In the 1st 3km of this run, I came up with the training "plan" above. So decided to make this the first longer run in said plan. Longest run since I had the stroke, and felt great tbh.

Saturday: 5km with double buggy @5:29/km

Marlay Parkrun with a buddy. So ran at his pace for 1st 3 or 4km, then was struggling in 4th km to push double buggy uphill and match my pace to his so let my legs go at the pace they wanted and accelerated a bit from there on. Splits were still gentle though! (6:18, 5:16, 5:36, 5:32, 4:43).

Must be said another glorious morning in Marlay, coffee and pottering in the playground after was very pleasant!

General Health

A good couple of weeks on that front, have made a concerted effort to bring painkillers down another step (still taking them daily, but just reducing quantity/frequency) and that's not been horrendous. Back to work somewhere between part and full time too.

Things have been improving steadily the past 3 weeks.

Week of 11th. 2 runs, total 14.1km @5/km.

I was still struggling to get out the door a bit but managed to get going in 2nd half of the week as the general health of everyone in the house improved.

Week of 18th. 4 runs, total 30.1km @ 4:50/km

Latched on to a novel "training" goal for me this week. Just run every 2nd day, try and make the weekend one a little longer. Really simple, really achievable, and plenty of time for my head to give me feedback.

Great weeks running I think, highest mileage week since October not surprisingly. And for 1st time went as far as 10km - I even did that one with E in the buggy.

Week of 25th. 3 runs (inc 5k TT), total 21.5km

The softer of the weeks in a 2 week cycle of running every 2nd day, meant only 3 runs this week! Nice runs midweek to keep the legs spinning, and then did a 5k TT on Saturday. This is a relic of COVID lockdowns amongst my college buddy group, but it's now in its 3rd year. 5k TT on the May Bank Holiday weekend, it's interesting to see how peoples times have changed over the 3 years too.

Gonna do a Time Trial report now!

Anyway, I thought I would take this as my opportunity to test the waters and run with high intensity for 1st time since the run that brought on the stroke. Felt good all week etc, and up and out early on Saturday morning to do 3 x 1 mile-ish laps in Sandyford industrial estate. It's always nice and deserted so knew I'd be able to run on the cycle lane and not worry about avoiding pedestrians or yielding to cars etc.

My goal was to simply run comfortably hard, set a 5k workout on the watch and put the display to "Strava Relative Suffering Score" (or something like that) i.e. a nonsense screen that I couldn't interpret or worry about. Then the time would be what the time was. That being said, I did get my 1k splits beeping at me, so I wasn't completely ignorant of my pace.

Splits were 3:46, 3:56, 3:50, 3:55, 3:53.

A relatively tasty 1st km to be sure, but the loop is a slightly on a hill, so 1st km had lots of gentle down, cancelled out by the bit of a drag in 2nd km. And you can see a similar pattern in the 3rd km which was mostly down with limited uphills and the 4th km which had the uphill drag. Either way, when I saw 3:46 for 1st km flash up, I was like "yay - it doesn't kill me to run fast-ish again", but I was also fairly confident of not holding that pace all the way through. Focused on keeping the effort steady and even with a blowup sub-20 was very achievable.

Basically did that for KM 2, 3 and 4. All be it getting a little more excited as sub 20 became surer and surer, when my 4th km started with a 3 I did the sums and reckoned even a 4:3x 5th km would get sub 20. Kept the effort up, and was obviously feeling it at this point in my lungs and legs. Ran through the beep, and 19:20 was on the watch. Boom. A good minute quicker than I really was expecting.

Small walking break then plodded through a warm up delighted with the effort. Only a TT, measured by Garmin, but even allowing for inaccuracy it was at worst a 19:30ish.

For context in 2020, on the same loop I did ~18:30. and in 2021, with E in the buggy I did 19:00 in Marlay.

General Health

7 months on, still taking pain killers every day. Still only the 1 painkiller free day too. I was wrecked on Saturday night after the TT, but we'd also had a family day in Powerscourt straight after. And I felt really hungover (headaches, tired etc) on Sunday, had to go back to bed, and then drag myself through the day somewhat..

So delighted I did TT, but was definitely an effort. As an indicator of my ability to do sessions regularly etc, I think it probably shows I may not be healthy enough yet, maybe just some lighter ones. But nothing brutal.

I've been slow logging, but not because I haven't been running. The Run-every-second-day plan is still going well actually, all be it I generally miss a day for pain/life/work reasons most weeks, so it really just becomes a run 3 times a week really.

Since 5th May, it's been a steady mid 20's km per week. Generally made up of 2 x 6 to 8km runs, with a long run of slightly increasing distance at the weekend. Some buggy running, some without as needs must. My long run is up to 13.5km.

I have thrown in a few fartleks here and there which generally felt nice, and I enjoyed a gorgeous run around Marseille before the disappointment of a Leinster loss. C also did his longest buggy run of 13km so it's all go. :-)

I generally feel ready to push on a little and start running consecutive days, but actually my biggest blocker at the moment is routine/family life etc. I've sort of lost the practice of squeezing them in. When I do, my plan was to do roughly 3 x 5 to 7 km runs during week, then long run at weekend...and see how it goes.

General Health.

Still taking painkillers daily. Still get "hangovers" when things get too much. Have an MRI next week, and appointment with neuro guy the week after which all going well will just give me the all clear.

I did add up how many pills I've taken since October, it's well in excess of 1500. With about 900 of that Paracetamol.

Thanks for this, been dwelling on it for the past week or so. And on reflection it's sorta what I did in 2022 (the 2nd half), and obviously worked for me to this point. So you make a good point.

I suppose what i was really looking to avoid are those periods where weeks go by with little or no running, or very few long runs for example. So maybe I just need to reframe my thought process, pick a distance (probably 5 or 10k) I'd like to race this year, find a few races then take em as they come.

First update of 2023, and I'll cover off January.

Was very surprised to pick up an award for Comeback of the year, given my mileage and training routine, I find it hard to consider myself as "back" but I suppose everything is relative!

As discussed with @Swashbuckler before, I had a thought of reframing the process and I liked the target of hours training (as opposed to distance). A few reasons for this, I've started playing football again (only 5-aside, once a week) and also 3 days a week I'm on the bike collecting kids from creche in a trailer. So a pure running goal doesn't account for these other activities. That said, if I skip football, or kids end up being collected by their mum, I should be able to upwardly adjust my running with the spare energy.

Also, E has started dance classes on Saturday morning, and is old enough now that it's a "drop and go". Conveniently, it's about 2.5km away, so we've been running there with her in the buggy, then I continue running for the hour she is in, and then buggy run home again. Long story short - I can't Parkrun, but I'm getting long runs in again.

So goal is, 3 hours of running/football/cycling in per week. With gradually increasing distance on Saturday long run. Once that is comfortable, and spring springs, I'll look to up the time running too (but hopefully that might happen organically).

So January Summary:

W/C 2nd: 2.25hours total, no long run.

W/C 9th: 3hrs 20, no long run.

Football was very intense. Embarrassingly, I've only been play every 2nd week up to now, as the twisty muscles like my groans are taking that long to recover. I do find that my stamina is probably the best on the pitch though. The odd header I make does fill me with dread but.

W/C 16th: 3hr, no long run

W/C 23rd: 4hr 25, 11km long run.

Big increase here. I ended up running 4 days, football on one and then cycles on 3 other days. Felt good for it though

W/C 30th: 3hrs, 14km long run.

A big increase in another way this week, all running because I was away with work, got out 5 days.

Also need to find some 5 or 10km races in Spring time to peak my interest, would need to be close to Dublin as I have limited capacity to spend time travelling to and from it.

Resurrecting this from the dormant status that it currently has. The reason I've been not posting anything is that there is nothing interesting happening, just lots of easy running, with a game of football every now and then. Then the odd period of no running due to children and life.

To try to give myself a goal, and also to celebrate the 10th anniversary of my one and only marathon, I signed up to DCM '24. The other not insignificant reason, is that a charity (Acquired Brain Injury Ireland) that helped me after my own stroke was offering charity places so I thought why not raise some money and get a place.

It's sort of a pain in the arse having to think about all this 9 months in advance, but whatever. My goal for Q1 is to really start setting my weekly running calendar so i know how much space Ill have for training when I start the actual training plan for DCM sometime in June or so. I'd be planning on doing a 12 week plan in 15 weeks or 16 week plan in 19 weeks to allow for children and life. I also need to find the plan that attracts me. My last plan was a Boards Mentored Novice one which was quite manageable and led me to a 3:24, but a lot has changed since then! On the one hand, I have a stronger foundation but I am 10 years older.

Anyway, last 5 weeks have been pretty good, it looks like 5 runs a week will be achievable, Monday, Tuesday, Weds, Thurs and Sat. Rough shape of the week would be Weds for sorta long run, Saturday for long run, rest probably easy. My mileage is modest at the moment, 40km p/w or so with a long run of about 15km.

The other question I need to answer is how long to keep playing footy on Tuesday nights. It's a bit of fun, but a bit obstructive for running. It means that Tuesday and Weds can only be done at easy pace (at best). And obviously carries the risk of injury.

I think I'll tip away for February still, and maybe target Terenure 5 Mile and a 5km time trial in May. Then maybe a half or 10 mile in July also. Just to keep my training paces accurate I suppose.

Interested in any training plan ideas, or even considerations before picking them. I'd obviously be hoping to achieve better than 3:24, but by how much is hard to know so far out. Right now, my assessment has been rather unscientific of the variables (roughly how many days per week, how many sessions, total mileage). But I feel like Ill just picking one semi randomly. lol