My Mum showed me a really interesting article on kids endurance running this week: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/child-health/article3619483.ece (The Times, Tuesday December 4th 2012.
It’s called “Should a child run 5k races at 7″ and opens with a 7 year old with a 5k pb of 26 minutes. Younger children are running increasingly longer distances and even have their own name: “endurokids”. Some 8 and 9 year olds are running half and full marathons in unbelievable times, with their sights firmly set on ultra distances.
There isn’t any in-depth research into the long term effects of doing high mileage in these early years but the overall message from the article seems to be not to do too much too soon. Children naturally love running and many studies show that short bursts of high activity, which they naturally engage in, are more beneficial while their basic motor skills and fitness are still developing.
The article comes down on the side of caution and cites several experts who believe that putting excessive strain on developing joints will be detrimental to children’s health. Possible side effects listed include: a mismatch of growth rates, chrondromalacia patellae (caused by imbalance in muscle strength of either side of knee-cap) and Osgood-Schlatter disease (inflammation of the growth plates at the top of the shinbone).
The Times doesn’t often voice my opinion but this is a rare instance where it does. Both my son and daughter love running and have completed 1k and 1mile fun runs. It was great to see their faces as they crossed the finishing line and got their medal – a real sense of achievement. We often run/walk together with the ultimate goal being that they continue to enjoy exercise.
That said, the dedication, discipline and commitment needed to run long distances isn’t something I’m comfortable with my 6 year old taking on. There’s plenty of time for longer distances, and lots of other experiences to try out.
For now I love seeing the kids running about with their friends or asking to go out for a run with Mr D and I – it’s fun, sociable and the main goal is to enjoy it. That’s what running is about in our house and that’s what I want for my children.
I’m not officially acknowledging Christmas until 15th, possibly 14th of December. Lots of friends already have their tree up but I think if we try to sustain that level of festive excitement for any longer than 2/3 weeks, something bad will happen.
Somehow, though, Christmas has managed to sneak in. The kids have been really getting into making soft toys, with N pimping his plushes with the addition of recordable voice boxes. They’ve amazed me with their creativity and dexterity, designing and sewing some fantastic presents!
We were also inspired by a visit to aminnybouquet to get out all the Christmas books and found we’d got quite a collection!
My favourite rediscovery has been “Santa Makes a Change”, this particular illustration taking me right back to six years old.
And Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without
Scratch and sniff oranges, cocoa and pine trees…!
We found “Look-Alikes Christmas” by Joan Steiner in a charity shop last week and it’s amazing! It’s Neil Gaiman meets the Borrowers: warm, fantastical, real and slightly macabre. There are reindeers made from wishbones, stage curtains made from teeth and hair. In short, it’s amazing! This is part of the first page – The more you look, the more you see!
But I’m not officially recognising Christmas until the 15th, possibly the 14th. Maybe the 13th…
There’s been poorliness a-plenty in the DtoD hovel this week. Our eldest has had ’slap cheek’ a horrible flu like virus accompanied by a neon rash that appears on the cheeks and makes its way down the body. It’s like something from the Victorian era crossed with Alien. It’s knocked our usual merry soul for six and has meant loss of sleep and general tetchniness for all.
We should really have been alerted to the seriousness of the situation when he chose a bottle of water at the cinema for his treat. A bottle of water. Water?! WATER? My god! We should have immediately contacted the emergency services, bundled him into a turbo-bulance and headed straight for the King of hospitals. But no, not on our watch. We had planned a walk after the cinema so a walk it would be. Here is our poorly son protesting about walking by holding on for dear life to a tree.
I'm ill. I don't feel like going for a walk. You can't see me. I'm a tree.
He managed about 40 minutes which was pretty damned impressive. The sight of him in tears, torrential rain, half a million dogs appearing out of nowhere and running straight at us through the woods and the youngest needing a poo was enough to make us call it a day. Since then he has been tucked up on the sofa softly moaning and eating the occasional dry cornflake.
It’s horrible when the children are ill. Nothing makes you feel more powerless than seeing them in pain. There’s fear, crying & a lot of bodily fluids – and that’s just you when you hear them waking up again in the night. They expect, they need you to make everything alright again. When something uninvited breaches the walls of your home and your routine it’s a nasty reminder of fragility.
I know he’s going to be completely better in a day or so. But they’re made of hopes and dreams, theirs and your own, and as adult you know how fragile those can be. Sometimes childhood can seem like such a lawless, brutal place. So it’s good to have a day or two to stop the clock, hold them tight and keep them safe indoors before you release them back out into the wild.
Both the children have reached reading landmarks this week. My daughter started school this September (more about that another time, I’m still coming to terms with it!) and has made rapid progress through the incredibly intuitive and sympathetic teaching in her class. She is starting to see that reading unlocks the answers to many of her questions and it has been very empowering for her. She can tell if a shop is open or closed (bugger…), if something on the menu has chips (again …) as well as just what Mum Bug has in her bag.
She spends a lot of time now writing letters, words and numbers and it’s magical watching her learning.
My son has also reached the stage where he wants to start reading to himself. I still read to him in before bed but now he is having some time for himself before lights out. He’s chosen quite a tricky book to start with but it’s his confidence more than his actual ability that needs boosting. I am just over the moon that he loves books and gets so much from reading.
Tonight he carefully fashioned himself a cosy reading nest in his bed and painstakingly positioned his new reading lamp at precisely the right angle. He then promptly fell asleep - I’m pretty sure he’s coming down with something – but it’s made my heart sing the past few evenings to hear both of them patiently blending and segmenting away upstairs, reading quietly to themselves and, with any luck, starting out on a life-long love of books.
This beautiful present from my sister says it better than I ever could.
After a 7 hour drive to Eastbourne I did question the sanity of making a 500 mile round trip to run a marathon billed as muddy & hilly and one of the most grueling in the UK – I could have stayed at home for that! Having completed several road marathons I wanted to try an off road one and entering Beachy Head had seemed like a good idea at the time… A sudden extreme drop in temperature that weekend and howling gales forecasted for race day did little to convince me that this had been a sensible decision but, this event was definitely worth the journey and braving the cold for.
Registration opened the night before so I nipped out from the hotel to pick up my timing chip and Cliff bar from the marquee – an oasis of warmth, both figuratively and literally! There was a great atmosphere even at 7pm in the cold, wind and dark.
Race day dawned very clear, very windy and very very cold. I had to scrape away a thick layer of ice from the van to make my way down to the start of the South Downs Way just off the seafront and the bottom of an enormous vertical hill that marked the start of the run.
There was a great mix of runners and walkers with 1500 people signed up for the challenge. Smooth organisation coupled with the wonderful facilities of St Bedes school meant the race got underway on the stroke of 9am. There followed the usual surge forward and fast start for all of about 400m before I made the tactical move of walking up the first hill – there were many more miles ahead after all, I needed to keep something in reserve!
This is a tough race. The bitter cold, long slow climbs, huge elevation and 45mph winds made it feel very hard indeed. The final 5 miles of coast line over the seven sisters into a headwind were brutal and it took days to warm up afterwards. That said, training on the Cornish coast path was excellent preparation. The course covered a variety of terrain: wide grassy paths, chalky trails and forest tracks. It also felt very fair in that the winding ups had several wonderful meandering downhill sections. There were the most amazing water stations at 7km intervals offering water, tea, coffee, soup, sausage rolls, mars bars, biscuits and lots of encouragement. With these to look forward to and the lovely camaraderie out on the course, the miles slipped by. I felt great and was looking at finishing comfortably inside 5 hours (which is very good for me!) as we joined the coast path and turned for home with 5 miles to go. Any hopes of maintaining a steady pace and pushing for the finish line then promptly disappeared, blown away by the hurricane we were running into. The seven sisters seemed to have invited a few friends over as the climbs just seemed to get harder and longer. I managed to run the whole of the fourth sister, mainly because I could make just out the faint outline of the next water station over the brow of the hill. Never has a soggy chunk of Mars bar tasted so good.
The wind was joined by driving rain and hail for the final few miles, making my legs burn on the outside AND the inside, as well as helping to sculpt the greatest finishing line photo ever taken (one day I might share…). Cresting Beachy Head was a fantastic feeling and I knew that it was downhill all the way to the finish. Hearing my name read out as I crossed the finish line was a fantastic way to finish and just one of many lovely touches in what is a brilliant event. Finishers can have a massage, a dip in the school pool and there’s even a free meal. I’ll be back next year for my sub 5! (Official finishing time 5:00:17)
I can’t believe that I only discovered trail running this year! Before that I only ran on roads and the odd off-road race I did do (I talking about YOU ‘Drogo 10′ 2010) I found impossible. I was used to the idea of maintaining a steady pace using, the odd hill aside, required using pretty much the same effort. Impossible to achieve on trails but I didn’t yet appreciate how much fun it is!
Having somehow got a place for the Grizzly at the start of the year off road training started in earnest. It was a steep learning curve in terms of technique, pace and fitness! This year saw the start of a new multiterrain series of races in Cornwall. There are 10 races ranging in distance from a half marathon to a 4mi beach run. You have to do 6 races to qualify for a series placing. After you’ve done the minimum your best six scores count towards your final rank.
After 9 races I am second in my age group and no one is more surprised than me! It’s been a brilliant experience and I’ve got stronger throughout the year. Just hoping with an off-road marathon looming on the 27th October that I’ll be able to atleast walk again for the final race – the 4mi beach race on Remembrance Day.
My Dad just gave me a couple of letters he’d found in my Grandmom’s things. Letters I wrote to her in my first year of university that she kept. Not only is it so wonderful to think they meant a lot to her, it’s also pretty cool to be able to meet your 18 year old self.
It seems that I liked everything and everyone and went out a lot. Those were the days…
I hardly write any letters anymore. I’m pretty terrible at email and only slightly better at texting. I have a slightly irrational fear of the telephone. You’d think that I’d be made for a career in writing! Sit down, computer on, no distractions as friends would have obviously given up on such a selfish unresponsive person! It turns out, not so much. I have a somewhat desperate need to feel connected to the outside world. I get a gnawing feeling that I’m missing out on something so even in the middle of a good run of writing I am easily distracted with checking and rechecking for messages. At the bottom of it all I’m worried about putting my heart and soul into something and it not being any good. And I know I need to just get on with it! It is, of course, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
So, time to start writing, all kinds of writing, again. I am now almost double the age I was when I wrote those letters to my grandmother. A lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same. I remember how each blog post is like a short letter to myself and how much I like re-reading things I wrote when I first started this. I remember how great it is to get post and to take the time to write to someone. Even yourself in a few years time.
So friends, brace yourself for something handwritten through your letterbox. In the next few years. Even if it’s just an old shopping list. It’s the thought that counts, write?
107 comments telling me my “web structure is very sweet” and offering me some great deals on male viagra tells me that, yet again, it has been a while since I posted. Summer holidays are nearly over, my little one will soon start school and then I’m going to have to find something to do.
I think this is why I haven’t really been getting up to much at the moment. I have been manically busy with the kids, house, work accounts etc but on a personal level I’m a bit lost.
I was writing quite a lot but my first rejection from a writing competition knocked the stuffing out of me and I have oafishly not written anything at all since. A race report for a recent 20 miler was the first thing Id written to break the block and I’ll stick it up on here in a bit.
Running wise I’ve upped my distances but need to get back to some technical training work. A session by a well renown local coach at RATs the other week showed me the error of my ways. I’m going to nip off in a sec and do a session of 40 x 30 secs hard, 30 secs recovery. This is what they did at the club on Thursday night and by all accounts it wasn’t nice! Like running, I find that it really helps with my writing to acknowledge when I’ve done something well (or these days, something at all!) so I am pleased to have written something. Now I’m taking to the trails for a pounding…
Have been very quiet reporting on the training front (some months for good reason…). I’m now training for an off road marathon in October. Along the way I’ve also signed up for a mile swim, 2triathlons and a 20 mile coast path race.
I’m also taking part in the Cornish Multi-terrain Grand Prix Series. I’ve done 5 races so far. You need to do 6 to qualify and there are 10 races in all. I’d like to do another two at least as my score from the Clay Country half marathon was one I’d like to discard. The races have been a very mixed bag but have included some stunning off road courses: the Five Tors, Meet Your Max and Lanhydrock 10 to name a few.
Hopefully I’ll be able to fit all this in but I’m going to be happy just going along for the ride and picking up as few injuries as possible!
