2017 and the year of the new road bike and an improved diet....
So we are now in April 2017 and most of my running is on hold with the odd event still thrown in for fun if I can run it damage free.
As I've touched on in earlier posts I have knee tissue damage that needs to heal and the good news is it does appear to be healing, but as with knee cartilage etc it will always be slow.
Having to drop all my big plans to step up to 50 mile ultras went out the window when I admitted to myself that I couldn't train properly for them without further damaging my knee and making it even harder to get to the actual start line never mind finish a 50 miler.
I felt a great sense of relief when I finally started to pull out of the events one by one as the year progressed and mentally it was a big help as I have been suffering with stress and mainly anxiety for pretty much the last 8-9 months after years of a job were you seem to be the go too person for any job that needs doing while you are on shift and the increased pressure that brings as you can't concentrate on one job or two at a time, which I need to do as I am slightly OCD and like to do everything properly and one thing at a time.
I felt like everything was down to me to do and I was being pulled from pillow to post and being spread extremely thin over the ground, so much so that I actually felt like everyone was walking all over me, which quite frankly they were. All this came to a head when I ended up on a disciplinary hearing at work for avoiding 'going that extra mile' when really I just couldn't deal with everything anymore.
I finally decided to change jobs to get away from the problem and the situations or stressors that were coming from the day to day pressures of my job.
I have been in the new job since Oct 2016 doing cleaning shifts for 5 days a week in a local gym and also keeping two shifts a week at my old job. This has made a huge difference as I no longer feel sick prior to going to work which was the indicator for anxiety which I originally thought was something to do with an intolerance to something in my lunch for near on 2 months.
Working in the gym is pretty much stress free, but still hard work and I'm non stop and busy, but the people in the gym are great and as we all know most people in gyms are usually in a fairly good friendly mood due to all the feel good endorphins flying around.
I still have anxiety issues but have learned to recognise them and try and deal with them. I have now come to the realisation that your health comes first and foremost including your mental health and no job is worth putting it at risk for, especially your mental health as it can spiral out of control and have deadly consequences. As a lot of you will know 1 in 4 people can and will suffer mental health issues, and mainly men, and the highest death rate is down to men under 35 committing suicide, this is way above all the various forms of cancer. It's a shocking statistic and one we need to address.
I have for many years findraised for various charities and I regularly go back to raising funds for Mind and I always include them in my various fundraising projects if I am fund raising for more than one charity at a time with my fundraising groups or projects.
All this leads to my new direction for 2017......
So what's new? well after all the rambling above, I have moved to a plant based diet were possible and am avoiding meat and dairy for healthier reasons and some moral reasons. I've watched a shed load of good and informative documentaries on Netflix and around the web. I've done a shed load of research and after already following some great ultra runners on social media for years and seen their results whilst living on a plant based diet I can see only positives in the change, although I wasn't happy falling another 3-4 lbs below my normal already light base weight. It's hard to eat a lot of fruit and veg :)
Apart from the new eating regime the biggest change is my training and fitness emphasis for 2017. I have now purchased a good quality road bike for going out cycling long and short distances out in the surrounding countryside and enabling me to continue and improve my overall fitness along the way.
It has also enabled me to seek another direction in my fundraising as I can now take on charity cycling events etc and not damage my knee in the process as there is no impact on my knee tissue.
I wasted no time in getting out there on my first week and doing a 20 miler, a 30 miler and a 40 miler within my first week, all this down to my running fitness giving me a good cardio and endurance base.
I also needed to ensure I had something to aim for for the year and I set up a new Facebook challenge page which enables you to choose or design your own challenge and raise money for a selection of charities preselected by myself and linked to our Facebook page care of a fundraising link for VirginMoneyGiving which sends the money direct to the charities.
The new page is titled 'Risk it for a biscuit' feel free to join it and commit to your own challenge. My challenge is to cycle 2017 miles by the end of 2017 and I only started in March so have to do on average 50 miles per week! This will ensure I get out on my bike and don't get lazy.
So please follow and support my blog as it heads in a new direction with it's new title, and please follow and support me along the way, and also please join me on the 'Risk it for a biscuit' page on Facebook or even join my team of charity fundraisers on the group Facebook page 'Run or Cake'
Thanks all,
Gru
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