Fibromyalgia and me (and a return to running)

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” – Alice in Alice in Wonderland

Though I am undoubtedly a different person to yesterday, some constants endure. One of those is that I am a runner (to be more accurate I should say I am a marathoner, rather than a runner, but I'll get to that in a future blog). And it is that, along with it feeling like I'm finally getting on top of my fibromyalgia that has led me to begin blogging again - as a non-runner I didn't feel I had much to write about as far as running goes and for a long period of time I genuinely thought my running days were done.

I intend to blog on both my attempts to get fit again, and technical running 'stuff', as various discussions and comments over the last few months have made me feel that my experiences, knowledge gleaned through various sources, and subsequent thoughts on running, might be helpful to some people. If there is a particular aspect of running you would like to know more about feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to answer (or blog on it if the explanation is a longer one)

This blog however will be more about 'setting the scene' as it will probably help people to understand where I am (and where I've been) before I start rabbiting on about different bits and pieces. The following will be an attempt to balance my wordiness with an attempt to sum up 14 years of running as succinctly as possible, so bear with me (or just come back for the first proper blog :) ).

Beginnings
I initially started running on New Year's Day 2007 (a Monday). My main aim was to get fit enough to set a good example for (my then) 1 year old son, and during my first run of 2 miles I genuinely thought I was going to have a heart attack when I turned around at 1m to go home. In what was, with the benefit of hindsight, a sign of things to come, I ran every day up to and including my first race on the Sunday (a hilly 10k in 48:41 - the last 5km was all uphill and a chastening experience to say the least).

However that first week was enough to remind me how much I'd loved running as a kid and I also remembered that what I lacked in relative talent I made up for in determination and stubbornness.

6 weeks on from that first 2m run I'd completed a 50m week. Through sheer bloody mindedness by early September I'd racked up my first 100m week (losing an awful lot of weight in the process), and shortly after that was lining up for my first marathon (not counting the two I'd run without training in my younger years - the impetuousness of youth!). In the space of less than 9 months I'd gone from a 48:41 10k to a 2:55 marathon around the New Forest.

Rapid progression and problems
Going from borderline obese to a sub-3 hour marathon in less than 9 months was a good enough start on its own, but I managed to continue to improve rapidly from there, running 2:46, 2:39 and 2:35 on my 3 outings across 2008 (the latter two being just 4 weeks apart and yielding a 1st and 2nd place).

Being a fan of BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) I had decided shortly prior to my 2:46 in April '08 that a sub-2:30 marathon was within my capabilities, and by May 2009 I almost managed it - in scorching conditions in Edinburgh I ran a 75:23/74:39 negative split to finish in 2:30:02 (frustratingly the finish line clock was slow and had me at 2:29:58).

After Edinburgh cracks begun to appear. For a variety of reasons (there will be a future blog on this too) by early September I was deep in the throes of over-training. I stumbled from problem to problem after this. Some were running related - e.g. pneumonia caused by racing with a chest infection (I thought it was just a head cold) - and some just plain bad luck - e.g. just as I regained fitness in early 2010 I had a home accident that ruled out the whole year (eventually they found a shard of bone embedded in the fat pad behind my kneecap.

Recovery from that took a long time, and by the Berlin marathon in autumn 2011 I still hadn't rediscovered my mojo, but managed to clock 2:34 running a 5 minute positive split (I wanted to see how long I could sustain a sub-2:30 pace; it turns out to halfway was the answer).

In what was going to become a repeating pattern over the next few years I missed a spring marathon as it took me far too long to feel normal after my autumn marathon. It became so common an occurrence it was jokingly referred to at my club as my 'spring marathon jinx' striking again everytime it happened.

In Berlin in 2012 I again came close to going under the 2:30 barrier, fading out after 35km to finish in 2:30:19, before another missed spring marathon attempt. However, after a summer of semi-decent training I changed tack 2 months out from my autumn target as I felt like I was treading water. Gone were the long marathon runs and in their place were surge long runs and long reps at 10k pace. 2 autumn half marathon pbs followed in quick succession, and lining up in Amsterdam in October I knew I was ready. Despite an early issue I crossed the line on the track in the Olympic Stadium in 2:27:48.

Much like buses, two more sub-2:30s followed in my next two races (2014), one of which was a race win in the closest I've got to a home-town marathon back in Ireland - it seems I like a track finish to a marathon as that one also finished on a track.

The lost years, increasing problems, and finally, a diagnosis!!
For mainly personal reasons I didn't run a marathon in 2015 (though my spring marathon jinx was also a factor), next lining up in London in 2016 where I had probably spent as much time in the gym as I'd spent running. I managed to execute one of my best ever races (though not times) as I got around in the course in 2:33, running evenly and strongly throughout.

My lack of interest in running continued into 2017 where a switch in club, and a return to being coached again marginally improved things. I'd gone across more of 2017 running (for me) very low mileage. Having averaged 35 miles per week for the previous 5 months I managed to pull things together and averaged 75 miles per week for the 11 weeks leading into Valencia in November (still low by my previous standards) where I got around the course in 2:28:57 (splitting 74:28 and 74:29 for the first and second half), and somehow closing the last 2.195km quicker than I'd ever managed before. A good first (and as it turns out, so far only) marathon in my 40s!

The boost in the arm that there was still life in my old legs was quickly offset by my usual post-marathon struggle. I stumbled through a spring 10m race at a considerably slower pace than I'd managed around Valencia. I began to feel more and more fatigued and even resuming iron supplementation after an anaemia diagnosis (lifelong recurring condition) didn't help.
Eventually my wife rather cleverly pieced my symptoms together, and after confirmation by my GP and an expert, by April 2018 I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

A stunning display of idiocy and fool-headedness
A diagnosis on its own is not a remedy however, particularly if you have a personality like mine where I can be my own worst enemy..... before I begun to slowly get better I managed to put myself in a truly deep hole during The Ridgeway Relay in June 2018.

The Ridgeway Relay is a 10-leg 80+ mile relay race between a multitude of local clubs with legs ranging from 5 miles up to 11 miles, on a mix of road, chalk, and grass/trail with a profile that is less 'undulating' and more 'f*cking hilly'.

In 2014, in the midst of my two sub-2:30 marathons, I'd run the 11m first leg in just under 67 minutes, and come June 2018, 2 months post-fibro-diagnosis, when realistically I should have stepped back and focused on getting better, I lined up for the first leg again.

My recce of the route a couple of weeks earlier saw me in such a bad way that I had to abort it after getting lost twice and suffering serious dizziness. With a strong club team lining up there was even more pressure on me to get us off to a good start. I came up with a race plan based on the terrain and profile that was about minimising losses and trying to stay as close to 67 minutes as possible, but accepting that if it went wrong I realistically could have been looking at over 70 minutes for the leg.

On the day I not only executed my plan to perfection (the last I checked the various Strava segments along the last downhill mile or so are still mine) but ran so far out of my skin that I became one of only 4 people (at the time) to cover the leg under 64 minutes in 25 years or so - unfortunately it was only good enough for 3rd place on the day, but it kept us in touch enough that we won handsomely over the whole distance. To this day I genuinely do not know how I managed to get around the leg that quickly, but what I realised on the drive home (thankfully I was a passenger and not driving) was that something internal had gone badly wrong. On that day I dipped so far into the well that, combined with my fibro, it took me the best part of 3 years before running felt consistently normal again.

Fibro in brief
Thankfully fibromyalgia is not a life-threatening condition, though for many who have it much worse than me it can be severely life-limiting. I'm incredibly grateful to know, and understand, what has caused my issues and to be able to pick a way through them, even if it has taken 3 years to get to the point where I feel I might be able to run at a reasonable level again.

The diagnosis provided more relief by explaining my symptoms than I can ever explain. Though I don't have it anywhere near as bad as many there were periods when I thought it was never going to improve, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, eventually begins to affect your mood and your sense of self.

I was so fatigued all I wanted to do was sleep, but was never able to get to the point of feeling rested. My pain responses/levels were disproportionately intense - even small things such as bumping my leg off a table or chair could hurt for days.
My hearing, and ability to communicate were appalling which was as hard to deal with for those around me as it was for me.

The symptom that caused me the most concern however was the memory fog (as there is a family history of Alzheimer's) as at its worst I couldn't even manage to find the 'open tab' on a pack of sandwich thins and resorted to cutting the packet with a knife. I was constantly mislaying stuff and my ability to remember anything (I'm notoriously scatty) was at an all time low.

Looking back now it all seems like a bad dream, and if it wasn't for the NHS it is one I would still be in the middle of. Because fibro is a relatively new, and therefore misunderstood, condition, my wife and I had to do a lot of research ourselves, but the NHS arranged specialist appointments and pain clinic courses, which with the research my wife and I were doing, began to piece things together and help me get back to a better quality of life.

Fibro, as it is now becoming to be understood, is characterized by a heightened 'fight or flight' system response. Essentially, as it was explained to me, your fight or flight system is permanently switched on.
This, in turn, means that your brain is constantly looking out for danger, and sometimes this manifests as an inappropriately heightened response to pain, or an inability to hear or hold conversations (think of your brain as a toddler shouting for attention and then try to imagine being able to hear clearly what's being said to you at the same time), and sometimes your brain is so hyper-focused on trying to find the source of danger it thinks exists (due to your fight or flight system being permanently on) that you lose the ability to do basic tasks.
The increased level of stress hormones generated by your fight or flight system being permanently on leads to exhaustion, especially as you often cannot sleep deeply as even when you try to sleep your brain still thinks there is some danger and you never get past the first level of sleep.

Where do we go from here?
So, firstly, if you've managed to stay with my ramblings and read this far, congratulations ;) , and thank you!
As I said early on in this blog, the purpose of this is to provide a background to where I am and to my training and attempts to rebuild. I hope, and am beginning to believe, that now that I may still have a few pbs in me. My increasing age (I'm now 44) is offset by an understanding of why I struggled to put successive training blocks together, and a better understanding of what I need to do to improve.

My next blog(s) will hopefully not be too long in coming, and in addition to some on my own training I will be doing pieces on different training methods (Lydiard, the Aussie complex system, Squires, Canova, Kenyan, etc) as well as some on different aspects of training (LT/tempo runs, repetitions vs intervals, general training structure, the basic mistakes I see people (including myself) make), and so on.
I don't have a preference on where I start, so if somebody has a request now is the time to shout!