Brain meltdown

It has been 3 weeks since the knee operation, almost. At least another 3 weeks until I can start running though. I will have to start from scratch again, building up mile by mile. It'll give me the opportunity to do a few short distance races. I only ever entered one 'road' 10k, one half and one full marathon ever. Getting fit again will give me the opportunity to smash what passes for personal bests at those distances. Back in 2006 when I first started running it took me 50 minutes to do a 10k. I've comfortably done them in 45 minutes just training, so I daresay I can shave a bit more off. Again in 2006, I did one half-marathon and it took me an hour and 50 minutes. Given I was doing 10 miles in an hour in fifteen, with torn knee cartilage; I would hope I'll achieve about an hour and a half when back to running. I'm not particularly interested in doing a road marathon again, but I'm fairly sure I could do one around 3:30, or maybe a little less if my 10 mile pace was anything to go by.

So, I'll set myself a few short term goals of running at least some 10k's and a half marathon on my way back to fitness. I'll be doing some LDWA events in a few months, and I have entered the OMM (medium score), but it is a ballot and I won't find out if I am in until August.

I have been doing some exercise to strengthen the knee; one-legged stands and squats etc. I am walking around perfectly well. I went out with one of my friends for a night out in Chester, first time in ages we've been out, and I managed to wander around the bars and tap my feet on the edge of the nightclub dance floor ok, so I must be on the mend. The doorman at the club made my night by asking me for ID! I'm 35... I'd love to say I looked 17, or even under 21 as the sign over the door stated "if you looked under 21 we will ask you for ID". I don't look vaguely anywhere near either, but still I got to be 17 again, even just for a minute. So, about 6 hours on my feet around the town and in the club, with the odd sit down, so I'm feeling positive about my knee. I do have painful scar tissue when fully flexing my knee in a quad stretch. That isn't improving much at the moment though.

In the evenings and into the early hours I have been continuing to work on my website. I have backtracked slightly and made some design decisions which will make my life easier further down the line. It will make the site easier to use, and to update for me. As a result, from someone who has never done any web design in their life, I am currently learning Flash & actionscript, HTML, Javascript, XML, mySQL and PHP, all at the same time! So, you can see why my brain is in utter meltdown if you know much about any or all of those. I have spent hours in the tiniest problems, and hours trawling the web for solutions to them. I've asked around on forums, but usually ended up persevering and solving the problems myself. As it stands, I have less ready to show than I did a week ago, but I am more geared up to add content quickly when I finalise the design.

Even when I release it, I think it is going to be an iterative process of feedback from everyone to improve the site. So, remember go easy on me I am a beginner at all of this. As the content grows, I hope to provide a valuable resource to ultra runners both new and old. It might be a couple of weeks away, before I put anything up. I'd rather get it mostly right, and get plenty of content on there, than launch the site earlier.

So, bear with me, and I hope to have something exciting to show you soon.

Have a good week.