Category: Health and fitness

Health and fitness, Thoughts

Reasons it’s OK to stop on a run

minceandskirlie

I watched a recent video by The Running Channel on YouTube where the presenter beat themselves up for stopping near the end of their long training run. I’ve seen other runners do the same, being annoyed with themselves for stopping on a run or walking a short distance. With the caveat that I am not a fast runner, or a coach, I’m just a recreational runner that’s been doing this for a long time, let me just say to everyone – it’s OK to stop!

Walking for a minute or stopping for a few seconds won’t suddenly undo the rest of the good work you’ve done during the session. If you’ve been working hard for weeks during a training block, aiming for a specific event that’s coming up, one short rest won’t knock back the weeks of effort you’ve put in leading up to it. So give yourself a break!

Here’s some reasons why you should stop during a run:

1 – To get a rest
This is the obvious reason. Maybe you’re coming down with something, maybe you’re still getting over that interval session the other day, maybe you just aren’t having a good running day. Take a minute, catch a breath and then get going again once you’ve reset.

2 – To cross the road
Another obvious reason. Not all of us have access to miles of uninterrupted running and occasionally, or quite often in an urban environment, you need to stop to safely cross the road. Remember to look both ways.

3 – To admire the scenery
You’re out for a trail run, you turn the corner just as the sun peaks out from the clouds for the first time, lighting up a majestic mountain which reveals itself in the distance and making the landscape around you glow. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming, sonnets are being written in your head at the sights in front of you. If you can’t stop for a second to check out the view, why are you even running off-road?

4 – Squirrel!
Channel you’re inner Dug. It’s OK to be distracted by a squirrel, fox, stoat, eagle, kestrel, owlbear. Just like number 3, one of the reasons I love running on hills and trails is to be surrounded by nature, and fill up my inner well with the beauty of the landscape and wildlife around us. If I hear a skylark high above me, damn right I’m stopping for a second to try and spot it. If I see a stoat running along the edge of a field, I’ll watch it until it disappears.

5 – To refuel
On race day, going for your PB, you can force yourself to eat a cereal bar or squeeze down a gel while you’re running. When you’re out on your long run in the spring sunshine and you’ve had months of a cold, wet, windy winter (as we have in Scotland), then it’s OK to stop to take on a gel, soak up some warmth for the sun, find a bin or a pocket to put the wrapper in, then set off running again.

6 – Because it hurts
If something hurts while you’re running. Stop! At least to see if it goes away. If it doesn’t go away and it’s affecting how you run – changing your gait, slowing you down – or it gets worse (especially if the pain is sharp), then really stop. Cancel the run and walk home or phone for a lift. Carrying on and making it worse will just lead to long term injury and even less running in the short term. Having said that, a bit of muscle ache is fine, no-one said it would be easy.

So there’s a few reasons why I think it’s OK to stop the next time you’re out on a training run. Obviously, some people are more hardcore than me and if you really don’t want to stop, that’s OK too. I’m not saying you have to, I’m just saying if you do stop then don’t be hard on yourself about it. At the end of the day most of us are doing this because we enjoy running, it keeps us fit, and gets us outside. Make the most of it and keep it fun.

Health and fitness, Thoughts

On Loneliness

minceandskirlie

Let me start this by saying something important, I’m not actually lonely. I have a great family, good friends that I see semi-regularly, and work colleagues I get on well with. In technical terms I’m not alone. I get adequate amounts of social interaction. This article isn’t a criticism of the people in my life or a problem for them to solve. But still… I feel lonely a lot of the time and I think I should talk about it.

It’s strange talking about loneliness. As someone who tends towards being introverted, I’m quite happy spending time alone. Especially when I’ve spent a lot of energy in other social situations or doing something stressful. Time by myself, to spend on a hobby – strumming a guitar or playing a game in peace – lets me recharge the social battery and give me a chance to calm down a lot of the anxiety that I’ve struggled with in recent years. But that doesn’t mean I don’t value time spent with others. I just have a limited well of energy to draw from.

It’s not intentional, or even by choice, but most of my hobbies I now practice alone. I’m quite classically nerdy and have a lot of interests I enjoy – I like video games, collecting Warhammer miniatures, playing music on guitar and mandolin (switching between heavy metal and traditional folk), writing, and dungeons and dragons. For the sake of my physical and mental health I have a few ways of keeping fit that I also enjoy – running, cycling, and more recently, indoor climbing.

Almost universally, I do all of these things alone.

(the exception is D&D where we have a semi-regular online session. It doesn’t work well alone)

Now this isn’t really by choice. Take playing music for example, I spent most of my late teenage years and my twenties playing music in local bands, going to gigs and talking to friends about it. It was a huge part of my life and my social circle. But as tends to happen, you get older, you start a family, work gets more important and it just fades away until it’s not really something you do any more. I still play music, just for my own enjoyment, but it’s not really a big part of my life anymore.

It’s the same for gaming. Growing up we spent most of our time playing games with friends. Slowly as we all grew up and left home, that moved into playing online together. But again, that’s faded away as it gets harder and harder to arrange sessions and by the time the kids go to bed, there’s not much energy or time left to try and get a game going. So I don’t really bother. I still talk about games with some of my friends, but it’s not really the same.

Even the sports I do find time for used to be more social. Many years ago I did Taekwondo and really enjoyed the social part of training martial arts. I was an active member of a running club a decade ago. I loved meeting up two or three times a week in a carpark in the hills and then trotting round a cairngorm nature reserve for an hour or two. It was brilliant. Since we moved house I joined the local club here and have been to a couple of sessions a few years ago, but then the pandemic happened. Now things are more normal, all the club sessions clash with kids activities or their bedtimes and it just isn’t feasible to make it along.

Before we had kids, my wife and I started going indoor climbing. Both of us were terrible at it, but it was something we did together and it was good to push us out of our comfort zone. A few years ago I tried to convince her to take it up again, but instead I find myself going to the boulder wall on my own and struggling in silence for an hour or so. I’ve tried suggesting to friends that they take up climbing so I can do it more socially, but hanging off a high wall, gripping tightly to some small bits of plastic appears to be a hard sell.

Now I know all these things can be social. I realise there are other people at the climbing wall when I’m there. I could even try and arrange social runs at lunchtimes with other people in the office that go running. They exist, I’ve seen them. I’m sure I could talk to them and suggest running the same route, at the same time, at roughly the same pace. I’ve even joined discord servers for the video games I like where they have regular online sessions, which I could join in. But that introvert part of me just doesn’t know how to do it and then thinks I’ll just end up letting people down when I can’t make it.

I’ve got into the position where I have lots of hobbies. But none of my friends that I do see, or any of my family, share those hobbies. So anything I’m really interested in I don’t have a way of enjoying with other people. It’s that feeling of not being able to share your interests with other people that makes me feel lonely.

My evenings are mostly a write off due to family commitments, so I can’t go to regular training nights, or folk sessions, or spend hours a week climbing. I’m also studying for a part-time degree with the Open University on top of everything else. I don’t have the energy to figure out how to make it work.

I’m sure this is something that will get better as the kids get older, and rely on us less and less. Or at least I hope so. I’m sure as well that this is a common experience. We all pine for our youth and the things we used to do when life was more carefree and we had no responsibilities. I also know there are people out there scratching their heads at this and wondering why I make it sound so difficult. I do see people my own age, with kids and responsibilities, who cope a lot better with making time for themselves to do things with clubs or groups, or make time to go see friends etc. I’ve just no idea how they do it. Answers on a postcard please.

There we have it. I don’t really know how to end this. I don’t have a solution or a plan of action to change things. Basically I feel like I’m alone a lot of the time, even though I have lots of hobbies, because I don’t get time to do any of them with other real people, and the friends and family I do spend time with, don’t share many of my hobbies. Maybe I have too many and need to focus on just one of them to do more socially? It’s a conundrum. If I could solve it, then it wouldn’t be a problem I guess!

Health and fitness, Tech, Thoughts

Enjoying a Twitter break.

minceandskirlie

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Twitter for a while now. Long gone are the days when it was a place of curiosity where we would marvel at celebrities tweeting while stuck in a lift or when the most serious tweets revolved around what to have for tea.

Now the site feels like a hotbed of trolls, racists, and racist trolls (or the US President as he’s commonly known).

I have a tendency to over-think things and get fixated on topics. Which makes it really easy for me to get sucked down rabbit-holes of Twitter hashtags full of abuse, conspiracy theories, and total fuckwits. I also developed a habit of just sitting on Twitter as my default position, either on my phone on the train or sat on the sofa at work. All that exposure to the extremes of human opinion is not good for my mental health.

Two weeks ago I deleted the app from my phone and got rid of any Twitter and Tweetdeck bookmarks in my browsers. I could still go to the site, but it means I have to type the address in manually. A small, but critical step in preventing me just auto-piloting on to Twitter when my brain goes into neutral. So far it’s worked. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve dipped my toe back in and that was just for a few minutes or to read a specific tweet.

Has it helped? Has going cold turkey from Twitter improved my mood? Absolutely.

Aside from the obvious benefit, not being exposed to a whole lot of idiots and their opinions which make me feel angry, I’ve found myself making much more constructive use of my spare time at home. Picking up projects and hobbies I didn’t have time for recently and being a lot more available for interactions with the kids and my wife. In fact it’s not until doing an exercise like this that I realised just how bad I was for shutting everyone out while I sat idly scrolling through Twitter.

That’s not to say that quitting Twitter has cured me of any of my mental ailments, it hasn’t, but it does stop me from actively seeking out content online which is only going to make me sad, depressed, and angry. Which can only be self-destructive in the long-term.

Am I finished with Twitter completely? Well probably not. There are good people on Twitter and some genuinely good content to be found. At it’s very best it can be used to spread positive messages and wonderful frivolous fun moments. Lately though those pearls are much harder to find.

For now I’m staying clear but when I do return I’m going to have to do some heavy pruning of my followers list to change the kind of content I see on my feed. Until then I’m going to enjoy spending my time away from the gathering of the internet’s worst people and spend more time being creative, engaging with real people, and doing the things that actually make me happy.

I might even manage to start writing again.

Health and fitness, News

That happened – Goodbye 2017, Hello 2018

minceandskirlie

Like many people I won’t be sad to see the back of 2017.  As well as the misery of the daily news headlines, I’ve personally had to cope with more than my fair share of problems this year. Poor  health and injuries have taken their toll on almost all aspects of my life and decimated my attempts at achieving the modest goals I set myself at the start of the year.

It’s not all been bad. My daughter Chloe has been a thing of wonder and joy as she grows into a bossy wee toddler. All being well I hope she’ll also grow into a caring and patient sister next year.

We had some fantastic times as a family, from holidays in the Lake District and  weddings in Fife, to just spending time at home in our own company.

I changed job, moving back to a role I’m familiar with in an effort to regain some lost confidence. A move which seems to be paying off as I feel happy going to work for the first time in years.

Creatively, I had some really productive spells which saw me get two poems published and I also had some real barren spells when I barely wrote a word or played a note of music. It was simply consistent with the stop/start nature of the year really.

2017 was a year that happened. I think it’s best we just move on and start fresh in 2018. In that spirit I’m going to try something different this year for my 2018 goals/resolutions. Normally I set a short list of goals for myself like getting poems published (only one I achieved last year) or running a race to a certain time. I usually hit a few and miss a few and the whole year of goals feels a bit of a non-event.

This year I’m not going to set goals. I’m going to set values. These are the values I’m going to try and stick to for 2018. They will guide my year and how I choose to live. Hopefully they will guide me to be productive and happy at the end of the year, but that remains to be seen.  I wanted to keep the list short and in return each one would need to cover a broad range. I think what I’ve settled on covers most of the big things I want to concentrate on over the year and by setting them as values, rather than specific goals, I don’t feel like I’m tying myself down to something that could blow up in the first month due to some unforeseen problem like I had in 2017.

Here goes then, my values for 2018:

Be Healthy – Prioritise good health in body and mind
Be Kind – To myself and to others
Create – Write, play, make
Learn – Try new things, read, listen
Finish – See things through to completion

These five basic values remind myself how I want to change my behaviours and how I want to push myself in the year ahead. I need to put my health first and also remember to give myself a break if I can’t do everything I want to. In this era of twitter insta-rage and the horrible daily news headlines I want to also remember to be kind to others and show empathy first before jumping to judgement. The first two are also a reminder to make sure I’m happy and healthy, not preoccupied with things I have no control over and can’t change myself.

Then rather than committing myself to doing specific goals for the year I just want to remind myself to be creative in my spare time, to increase my knowledge and finish projects that I start. I have so many half written pieces, scraps of music and bits of projects I’ve started then never gone back to. I need to get things over the finish line occasionally.

So that’s my values for 2018. It’s set to be a busy year personally and it’s difficult to know how much traditional goals I would have a hope of achieving at the moment. Hopefully approaching things in this way still gives me that push to go in the direction I want to without adding the specific pressures that goals provide.

Happy New Year!

Health and fitness

Goals change, that’s OK

minceandskirlie

At the start of the year I set some goals. I liked those goals. They were sensible, achievable and meant I could throw myself at 2017 with some enthusiasm. Sadly my body had other plans for the year ahead.

Shortly after setting these humble targets – run a half marathon, record some of my music, publish a poem, and lose some weight – I had an episode. I got home from work and felt short of breath and a bit dizzy. My heart was having palpitations and was beating ridiculously fast. It got worse and lasted a few hours. Typically though, it had stopped by the time I was worried enough to contact NHS 24 and arrange to speak to a doctor at the local community hospital.

I’d experienced my first episode of Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation. A heart rhythm disorder which manifests as attacks of up to a few hours in length (for some people it can be days), where the heart suddenly starts beating with a very fast, irregular rhythm. It’s not life threatening, but during an episode I could barely go for a walk without feeling extreme fatigue and afterwards I was left feeling very tired.

Eventually after months of experiencing up to four episodes a day, I was able to get everything under control with medication by the middle of the summer. Now I feel pretty much back to normal.

Sadly by that point I was now also dealing with a recurring back injury, which at the time of writing (early September) I’m still having issues with.

My two main forms of exercise are running and cycling. I’ve hardly been able to do either for most of the year. Now when I do get out I usually pay for it the next day with back pain and restricted movement. Lots of fun this injury business.

Having lost my ability to exercise that meant my half marathon goal was toast. Even more annoying, without regular exercise I started putting on weight. Instead of losing a stone I gained one. Whoops. Another goal down.

Over the course of summer I changed job, went on holiday, had some other personal stuff going on and then I looked back and I hadn’t played or recorded any music for months and it looks like the EP goal is going to be missed as well.

You know what though? It’s OK. I’m not too down about missing these goals. Stuff happens. I’ve been pretty lucky and avoided any serious health issues or injuries over the years so to lose one year to some problems isn’t a big deal. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to take part in the first Great Run to happen in Aberdeen and obviously I’m annoyed at putting on weight but the layoff has given me opportunities as well.

I’ve hunted for advice on how I can fix my back problems which are apparently muscular issues, so I’ve looked at how I can increase my range of movement and the strength in my core. Both are issues I’ve meant to address for a long time but while I’ve concentrated on running and cycling it never seemed too urgent.

For the last couple of months I’ve used a two prong approach of body weight strength exercises and yoga. Both give a flexible program of movements which can be done with very little equipment and can easily fit into a life at home with a two year old toddler. I’ve even tried to get her involved a couple of times but she’s not quite got the hang of handstands or pull-ups yet (who am I kidding, I haven’t got the hang of them either!).

The body weight exercises I’ve grabbed from the amazingly helpful and supportive community at r/bodyweightfitness who, as well as publishing a recommended routine complete with detailed progressions and prerequisites, also publish regular technique features, videos and maintain an app for the exercises all for the princely sum of nothing at all.

Another superb resource of inspiration and tips has been the excellent folk at Gold Medal Bodies who offer premium paid for content of training programs, but also publish some fantastic blogs and video content for free on their website and Facebook page.

Then there’s the yoga. There’s a lot of nonsense which surrounds yoga. To be honest a lot of it I can do without, especially after buying a reference book for the movements and flicking through a load of pseudo-scientific rubbish in the surrounding chapters. However, the physical and mental benefits of spending a bit of time going through a yoga flow and then the reward of the Savasana meditative pose at the end are immense.

I wanted yoga to be something I can do at home in a quiet corner of the living room to unwind. Not a communal class I had to drive to and commit to an hour or so of discomfort in the presence of others every time I wanted to do some movements. To that end I installed the Down Dog app. It’s available for free with a premium version which offers extra ways to customise your practice, but to be honest the cheaper one gives you plenty to get going with.

Neither the bodyweight routine or the yoga practice are easy, even for someone who is relatively fit and flexible. The variety of movements and the range of progression means I’m always being pushed but even after the few short weeks I’ve been doing them I can see a big improvement in strength and most importantly my back!

Just the act of maintaining some kind of exercise routine (even if it’s not the exercise I want to be doing) has improved my mood considerably. It’s also made it a lot easier to motivate myself to get my diet back in shape using some calorie tracking to pinpoint exactly where I’m doing the damage to my waistline and tweak it as necessary.

So while I may have failed some of my initial goals for the year, I’m not down about it. I’ve embraced the opportunity to be flexible and try some new challenges. If I can strengthen my back and get back to running then this years goals will still be there, waiting for me, in 2018. In the meantime just getting back to health is a big enough goal by itself.

Oh, I didn’t mention the goal I set about publishing some poetry. Issue #5 of The Poet’s Republic, released in September 2017, features one of my poems. As does The Federation of Writers (Scotland) New Writers Scotland anthology to be released in Autumn 2017. Hooray! One goal complete!