Surviving the flu vs. surviving the run 🏃‍♂️

I got caught on an early morning run this week around Guildford, it was too early to be out running, but I’m a bit weird like that and enjoy the head torch on a cold winter’s morning.

I was led into a false sense of security as I approached the turn back point at the river, one puddle which was roughly 10m long, I managed to get through unscathed and more importantly without wet feet.

The next puddle roughly 20m long, this was deeper, and I had to cling on to the bank to avoid it flooding my shoes.

The next one started off ok but as my headtorch beamed 20m ahead I could see the top of a yellow object next to a traffic light. I wondered what it was, and suddenly realised it was a traffic cone covered in water. I didn’t fancy an early morning dip in the river that had burst its banks at 2 degrees.

This forced an out and back run which I’m not opposed too, better to be dry.

Classic Britain in January, wet and dark. Our operations manager, Lauren has the right idea this weekend as she is jetting off to sunny Marrakesh! We are looking forward to some Moroccan tea when she comes back.

A holiday read that I recommended to her, and everyone now is ‘The Comfort Crisis’….

It talks about an idea called ‘problem creep’ which is where our threshold for what we call a ‘problem’ is lower more than ever. This is because we are not exposed to tough situations as much anymore. You can find out more here

 -We have food delivered to our door whereas 1000’s of years ago we had to go out and hunt.

-We can order pretty much anything online and have it delivered to our home within 24 hours

-Central heating keeps us warm whereas our ancestors had to use fires to survive.

-The thought if a lion coming up behind you and you running for your life is not a concern.

The author, Michael Easter talks about how we are conditioned to find problems in our life, we will always have them. When you deliberately make life harder for yourself or push yourself out of your comfort zone you are raising the threshold for what you consider a problem and therefore making yourself more resilient.

He claims this allows you to face the day and life’s challenges with a more resilient mindset.

Too often he says we take the easy route, easy decision now means hard decision later, hard decision now means easy life later. I have had to apply this principle a lot this week as I have recovered from ‘THE FLU’, everyone has had it within the last 8 weeks.

This was a bad one, I have not been that knocked out for a long time, yikes! It meant I really struggled getting up early in the mornings and wanting to go and train.

I then made sure that once I was recovered, I tried to get back into a good habit. Hard decision now to get up and train should hopefully mean that the Surrey Half in March is going to be easier (it’s never easy).

Anyway, let’s get into the meat and potatoes, I want to show you a great stretch for sciatica.

Sciatica can be difficult to manage as it is usually awkward and there aren’t many positions that are comfortable. This one is pretty good though and the main thing I like about it is that it doesn’t flare the sciatica up as there is no rotation in it.

  1. Find a door frame
  2. Take the side that your sciatica is on, for example pain in the right leg, put your right hand on the frame.
  3. Lean into the frame and make a curve with the side of your body
  4. Feel the stretch in your side and down the side of your leg
  5. It should relieve the pain
  6. If it causes more pain stop and email me on info@westchiropractic.co.uk and I can amend the stretch
  7. If it is good, then gold for 30 seconds and repeat 3 times, you can do this continuously throughout the day if it is not causing any more pain in the leg.

Try this one if you are struggling with sciatica and let me know how you get on.

Good luck if you are running in the Surrey Half or any spring races.


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