A sports therapy and performance clinic that has the sole aim of taking you from the treatment table all the way through your strength and conditioning training.
Here we find out the root cause of all your injury and postural related issues.
From there you will receive the correct treatment and rehabilitation that will develop the knowledge and know how within yourself stay away from injury.
Here we do more than just treat a symptom.
After our efforts on Day one and the long blog entry prior to this one that you will see, this entry is somewhat shorter!!
We had a little longer sleep this time round to recover from the running and beer combo from the previous day and all started out ok. We checked over are aches - in Dave's case it was cuts and bruises!
I think that you'll agree that in this picture it may well be the strangest looking leg you have ever seen!
I, much to my own surprise felt pretty good. Only niggle I had was in my left ankle where I landed funny and compressed the front of the joint.
We all got our gear ready and set out yet about thirty seconds into that Staff commented that his left knee was giving him some jip, which is not uncommon with us on our runs as I am sure most long distance runners have experienced - sometimes you just hurt but you get on with it anyway.
Having a sports therapy background helped me to realise pretty quickly that we could be in for a short days work. Staff's mobility was non existent and the pain getting increasingly worse for him, which did involve us mocking him slight for being a tart! If he ever writes on here he can give you the run down in more detail of what was going through his head at the time.
We had found our route.......
Random old house crushed by a tree....good photo opportunity!
As we gently warmed up it was clear on Staff's face that he was both struggling and feeling gutted that he was holding us back but as we said to him ' we're a team, injuries happen, we aren't leaving you'
Honourable aren't we ay!!
To be fair I think we were all secretly thinking that this could be a good reason to get to the pub earlier haha
We were going through a wooded area when it came time to strap Staff's leg to try help him out....the poor boy was hobbling around like Jake the peg!
For the record, I din't take this picture...shoddy work!!
What was funny when I was helping strap him up was the fact that he was stripped down to his pants, leaning over to only have a lady walk up behind him in some shock at the sight! "oooo wasn't expecting that" she said haha............I'm sure she loved it really.
We knew our day was coming to a brief conclusion yet it didn't stop us messing about somewhat...........
boys will be boys!!.........or is it just us??
Just so you know, we made it safely back to the pub and drank plenty of this...
In all we had a great weekend, next stop being the lake district 1st - 4th June.
We have had our first weekend away running up some slightly steeper terrain in a vain attempt to try and replicate what the Transalpine will dish out to us.
We know that we will come up against some very tough inclines and declines come September but you just don't get the Alps in the UK!! We are trying though!!
We set off on the morning of 4th May to travel across to Wales to trek along the Snowdonia mountain range.
Fortunately for us the car we ended up going in was a top end autobiography Range Rover sport which we took great delight in cruising around in all weekend. So much so I think we pressed and adjusted every button in the thing to see what it done!
We started setting up camp in BeddGelert around 6pm and promptly took ourselves to the pub for some dinner and a few beers to prepare us for the next days adventures.
This was my tipple of choice...I do like to try Real beers I've not had before...got plenty of practice over the weekend :)
After a very cold and sleepless night had by myself due to my air bed being punctured - which meant that my not suitable for a cold night in Wales summer sleeping bag, didn't protect me from the cold hard floor.
I just had to listen to all the sounds (you all know the ones) of 3 other lads in a tent whilst being envious of how cosy and warm they all looked and with actually being asleep!!
Saturday 5th - The running day!
We got ourselves up nice and early to make breakfast with Dave's trusty camp gear...I swear the man has a piece of equipment for everything!
Once we had washed up and got our gear on it was decided that we were running up Mt.Snowdon via the Watkins path.
As we got a couple of miles into our route we recorded our first video via Jamie Stafford (Staff).
So we progressed up to the foot of Snowdon.........more videos followed.....
Added in a bit of Staff humour in the next one...... Ian Fleming would be proud!
Thankfully he didn't have any RogerMores with him.....feel for his missus!..... good for him though haha
As we were fleet footing up the Watkins path we caught up with a young lad taking a breather and would you know the kid was a whippet!! We were trying to keep up with him once he got started again...I'm sure he was only about 11. We did the only thing we could think of to get past him...we grabbed him, tied his laces together and rolled him down the hill with a packet of jelly beans and cheerio!!
OF COURSE WE DIDN'T DO THAT!....we had no jelly beans haha
As we approached the summit of Snowdon we left our little mate and climbed up the jagged rocks passing quite a few of the guys training for the 3 peaks challenge. Once up there we had a quick group photo and chipped it into the cafe for a coffee and a bite to eat....cue photos.....
DAMN we're cool!!
So after our brief stop we took it upon ourselves to become champion fell runners across the peaks across from Snowdon (I have forgotten them names).
JK then revealed his hidden talents of bounding and jumping across the terrain like a crazed Jack Russell on party pills....the boy flew across these things whilst I was busy trying not to fall off! I did miss judge a rock and had a gouch related incident.....there was a yelp.....followed by laughter and we carried on!
More pictures now....
This is my favourite picture from the whole weekend. (above)
I wasn't quite in my power stance for this one......#prematurepicturetaken! ( I look more like a teapot! albeit a semi powerful one haha)
A quick look back at Dave, a mini MT.Doom and my ever receding crown....it's a cruel hair world
Sitting...contemplating a Wayne Rooney hair transplant...
Off the fells we came to our scheduled pit stop.
You may think that we weren't prepared for our run and that we were in desperate need of a cafe but fear not! I carried the gas cylinder, Staff the burner, JK the Spoons and our own individual........... POT NOODLE!!
Yes I am very nutrition conscious being in the fitness world but! when you have been on your feet in the elements and fancy a hot bit of grub.....who cares! mmmmm tasty refined foods.....well I say tasty, it was hot.
Oh yeah, JK carried extra water for the pot noodles.
Long blog post this isn't it! Not far from the end now.
So we packed up and made our way for the end phase of our day- If memory serves me right I believe we were around 5hr 30mins into our day by this point. We headed down hill and it a very short period it got quite funny.
With one turn of my head looking back I missed Staff fall flat onto his side....It was classic! It happened so fast that what made me look forward quicker was JK bursting out with laughter with Staff in the foetal position slightly groaning. This must of put me off as about 50 yards down the track I came up to a boggy patch, tried to get round it...failed and fell into it....cue more JK and group laughter!
The route home took us through a lovely stretch of woodland, coupled with the sun shining through the trees. Was a fitting end to what was a good honest days training.
As I was going through this nice wooded area I felt the need as I quite often do, to make a video.....
To round things off nicely I have a picture of our total length of time on our feet for the day....
The latest run we increased to 24 miles from 20 the previous effort. The weather was beautifully wet all the way through the run which I found quite fun to be honest. I haven't run through muddy puddles in a while, felt like being a kid again at times...then my body would hurt in some random place and I'd be reminded that I am in the middle of a long arsed run! ha ha
We took at few pictures and recorded a few videos for you to have look at. We like to have a bit of a laugh when we run together :)
Just a word on Staff - He injured his hip 12.5 miles into the run and fair play to him, he battled through the rest of the run in quite some pain to finish. Great bit of mental discipline from him.
The evidence!
Staff's and Dave's normal greeting to me.
looking like a wet dopey (snow white)
Standard team pose this one
Felt like the right thing to do
I think on this pic of me smiling my upper lip got caught on my braces haha...wadda mess!
Nice and sunny it was...
Soaked through...time for a change of shirt
Dave's best Sloth impression! ....Hey you guys!!!
now the videos
Dave's description of his bowel movements. Classic.
How many lads to find a tablet???
Victory dance!!
All in all it was a great effort by us all and the next run is on Mt. Snowdon in Wales!!
We are spending a couple of nights there to do a some solid an hilly 5hr runs......sounds like fun doesn't it!?
All I know is, given that it is the four of us camping there it is sure to be a laugh however hard the running might be. In the end, that's what it is all about. Fun.
Sitting listening to my friend Adam deliver his grooms speech could turn out to be a turning point in my life. He and I share the experience of losing our Dads to illness - my Dad in 2005 and his in 2010.
I was expecting to feel a bit emotional as he began to speak about his Dad but not the sudden wave of feeling that I experienced.
I am always the first to look out for my friends and give as much as I can to them to help them in any shape or form but I realised as I listened to Adam that I haven't been looking out for myself in the same way.
I think I have developed a habit of shutting off certain thought processes in the time that my Dad hasn't been here as a way of not allowing myself to get hurt again. I was in and out of a relationship around the time of my Dads death which was a very confusing time for me, when I began to clear my head about what had happened to Dad and the finality of it, the relationship ended quite abruptly. Losing him broke my heart and there will forever be a part of me that will never recover from that. (hard to type with tears in your eyes).
The timing of the relationship ending was hard to take in equal measure but for different reasons. I had realised that I totally loved this girl and I finally let all my walls down and wanted to move on in my life with her and then wallop! As soon as I let myself be vulnerable I had my heart broken again.
So what did I do? I actually shut up shop with wanting to experience those feelings of love for someone, to have the heartbreak that makes you want to throw up and not being able to think of anything else.
The only thing I could do though was to move on, yet I did it in a way that punished myself emotionally in order to protect myself, or so I thought up until recently.
The wedding has been an accumulation of change within myself this year, when I got up to do my best man speech I had a lovely sense of pride that I had been asked to be in that position for a friend. As that realisation hit me I felt totally at ease with myself and felt like my emotional barriers had been lifted. To such an extent that I was an emotional mess at times! haha took me about an hour after my speech for me to calm down. Was a brilliant speech so I am told so I am happy with that! :-)
Since Saturday I have continued to feel quite emotional with feelings of my past surfacing that I haven't felt for quite a while and where I am struggling a bit with it I am pleased that this is happening - albeit it feeling like absolute sh*t at random times.
I took the decision recently to open up to someone very special to me and tell her how I feel.....which to be fair was a massive leap of faith but something I felt I had to do.
I crashed and burned like something out of Top Gun!!!!...... but I did it. It is no longer the time to hold myself back for the sake of not getting hurt again.
The more I put myself through the training of this event, the more I am realising what I am capable of. I wasn't quite expecting to experience the things I am during this process but whether I am slogging up a tough climb on a run or laying my heart on the line for the chance of something great, I know that I will give all my heart to it and have no regrets.
