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Day 52–The Wheels Begin To Fall Off

The right leg felt sufficiently better during the day to see me out for the Thursday night club run – it included five or so minutes of running with the buggy as I was late collecting my daughter from school. I didn’t go into the run with any great confidence of a positive outcome however – a feeling that I had a cold brewing didn’t help matters.

I ran 4.5 miles before joining up with the club – keeping close to home in case things went very wrong. The weather was miserable – wet and cold, only a degree or so above the point when snow would turn to sleet and then snow. My legs felt heavy and I struggled to enthuse myself. Things picked up a touch when I ran to the club – there was still very little pain in the right leg aside from a niggle near the knee.

We ran the same route as last week – to Belton House, then Londonthorpe before heading back to Grantham. We checked out our potential new meeting place – a cycle storage and changing facility behind the Tolle. It met with my approval as I acquired a sudden need to test the facilities with an emergency pit stop.

That inconvenience over and I felt a little more lively – something in the stomach clearly hadn’t agreed with me. Splashing along in the puddles I took a slightly longer route than my club mates so spent a mile or so making my way back to the front of the pack by the time we reached Belton House.

It was here where the inner thigh near the knee began to get quite sore when running. It was enough to slow me a touch although I couldn’t decide if it was more painful to run slowly or quickly. I settled mostly for something in the middle as I took a wrong turn somewhere in the dark and spent the next half mile heading back to the front of the pack and pushing on – feet by now totally soaked as large swathes of the road resembled streams and tributaries.

We climbed up through Londonthorpe and on the quiet narrow lane that takes us back to Harrowby and Grantham. By now the thigh was constantly quite painful and the discomfort and tightness began to spread to the upper calf. My consternation must have been fairly obvious as a few club mates asked if I was okay. I grumbled something about being injured and having to ease back for the next week or so.

Once into Harrowby and near the Girls’ school, I said my farewells and took the shorter way back home, the internal GPS successfully predicting, almost to the metre, that there would be exactly sixteen miles covered by the time I reached home.

A stretch in the rain then a long hot shower to warm up, followed by a twenty minute ice session, something I’ve not needed to do for the best part of a year. The following morning and there was no killer pain, thankfully, but enough discomfort for me to decide not to run – hopefully a day or two or more of rest, plus Ibuprofen, stretching and massage will see the problem settle. It’s been a good run without injury, hopefully this one will not set me back too much.

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Day 51–A Little DIY

I spent much of yesterday evening working on the right upper leg: massage; stretching; prodding; massaging; stretching…. Come the end of the evening the hamstring felt a little looser but the inner thigh near the knee was really sore to touch.  In desperation I applied a liberal dose of Arnica Cream to try and reduce any inflammation.

The morning brought no unwelcome surprises – little discomfort during the kids’ walking to school. I did a little more massage and stretching and decided I would risk a run – albeit a little less mileage than I’d originally planned. I decided too to keep it as flat as possible, so it was the Wyndham Park out and back route – with a twist.

I was very nervous about the first few steps, unsure of how the right leg would react. Thankfully there was no discomfort in the right hamstring and whilst the inner thigh near the knee was sore, it was well within the margins of pain threshold.

I kept the pace slow and steady – helped by the outbound leg featuring a strong wind. Having tackled Dysart Park I took a brief excursion to B&Q to buy a small item for our new washing machine – a large 12kg affair bought to accommodate my never ending accumulation of running clothing. It felt a little odd shopping in full winter spec running gear (It was nearly 9C but the wind chill made it feel closer to freezing) but needs must and thankfully the item needed fitted snugly in my tights’ pocket.

The return leg was a little quicker because I had a tail wind, but the right thigh being sore slowed me a touch – the knee starting to ache a little too. I made it home in one piece but not sure how the leg is going to fare in the coming days and weeks. I’m hopeful that if I ease back on the quick stuff for a bit things will heal itself without the need for a lengthy spell off, but I guess we’ll just have to see.

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Day 50 – There May Be Trouble Ahead

Day 49 was a rest day, although rest is something of a fluid term as it involved seven and a half miles of walking kids to and from school and a trip to the supermarkets. I ended the day perhaps more tired than had I just done an easy six in the morning.

Tuesday and the plan had an easy six in the morning followed by eleven at marathon pace in the evening. The wife is totally snowed with work at the moment so I decided to switch, doing the marathon paced run when the baby was napping and then doing the six later in the evening once I’d put the kids to bed.

The morning walk to and from school was a lethargic affair – not pained, just slow. I had to work myself up to get out and running especially as it was to be at a fair pace from the off. At least the skies were blue outside, although the stiff breeze that has numbed the face for the past few days was a persistent feature of the day.

The opening miles of the run were routine enough; I was swift out of the box and pain free, knocking out the first mile in a sprightly 6:24 – quicker than I plan to run the opening mile come marathon day. The second mile was harder, but faster, as it was mostly into a head wind, and the third mile was mostly uphill and into a headwind, which made it the slowest of the run. I had a warning sign with a twinge in the right hamstring approaching four miles, the pain subsided soon enough so I carried on. Miles five and six were spot on marathon pace despite being partly uphill.

After a pit stop at the sports centre I continued sprightly and keen to knock out the final few miles. Things though got tough on the way to Barrowby and leaving the village the twinge in the right hamstring and in the inner thigh increased in intensity. It didn’t slow me too much in the final couple of miles, partly as they were mostly downhill, but they knocked the impetus out of the run – it felt as if something could go at any moment.

I made it home without too much distress; after a stretch I went to play with the massage tools – looking for signs of trouble. There was plenty to be found: from the hip to the knee, quadricep and hamstring – there were sore points everywhere. I massaged for around twenty minutes, then after lunch walked to collect my daughter from school. The hamstring ached for much of the walk near the knee. There and then I abandoned any notion of running again in the evening – hoping that an evening of massage and sleep can alleviate the symptoms.

This pain first struck last Tuesday at the mile reps – something on the right hand side doesn’t like running at pace. Hopefully I can find the problem soon before Project Sub 2:45 begins to potentially derail.

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Day 48–Following A Black Line

I wanted to try a new route for my long run this morning, so last night I went to Garmin Connect and went about plotting a route. After a couple of attempts I settled on a 22 mile course that took me southwest of Grantham utilising roads I’ve mostly not been on before.

This morning and after initially thinking I’d have to endure a 6:30am start it was decided the best way to utilise the day with work and stuff was for me to head out when the baby was having her morning nap. So at 11 and after two attempts to upload my course to the Garmin I headed out.

Within a few minutes of running it was apparent I was somewhat dehydrated, a nagging feeling of thirst that peaked around eight miles into the run before subsiding somewhat, only to return in the closing stages. Too late to return I carried on, legs pretty stiff for the first few miles, especially as the route was upwards for much of the first three miles.

Like yesterday it was a gloriously sunny day with only a few clouds in the sky. But also like yesterday it was windy – perhaps windier than yesterday and it was going to be a headwind for the opening half of the run. On rolling roads with the odd short sharp undulation it was a case of digging in as best I could as the wind battered me relentlessly on the exposed roads surrounded by farmland. At least the roads were quiet, the occasional car and groups of cyclists the only company.

At halfway I reached Sproxton and with a sharp left I was faced with a stiff climb and the stiff wind now blowing behind me. Once I hit the top of the hill I began to fly; the miles that were outside seven minutes in the first half of the run were now comfortably under seven minutes and edging closer to 06:30. After a couple of miles that were gently downhill the terrain became far more undulating, and on the Grantham Road – now deserted but showing all the signs of being a road of some significance, there were a couple of steep climbs that numbed the legs.

All the while I was religiously following the little black line on the Garmin, telling me exactly where I should be running and reminding me (All too frequently thanks to a little bug on the 910XT) that I was inches off course and then back on course. Another quirk of this flagship Garmin device is that when you are using the watch to guide you on a course, it is prone to infuriating delays in actually deciding which way you should be heading and even, on occasion, completely turning the device off whilst running. What makes this more galling is that the old faithful 305 had no problems with courses – a device that celebrates its tenth birthday next year and in some ways, like this, is superior to the best Garmin currently offers.

Moaning over, and I was running fairly well, with just the pelvis aching a bit and the top of the right foot aching where the tongue on the frees irritates (A shame as in every other respect these are my favourite trainers). At the end of the Grantham Road and when the Garmin finally refreshed itself to decide I should head straight over the main road and onto a dirt track which had signs quite clearly stating not suitable for motors. There was a certain irony then when on this mile long or so deeply pot holed track three cars passed me, the same number that had passed in the last seven miles.

Leaving the dirt track and I was on the road to Little Ponton, one I’m now very familiar with. I put the Garmin out of its misery and stopped the course mapping, which finally gave me a chance to look at the regular pages of data I have scrolling whilst running. It told me I was averaging 07:02 so I had a little work to do to achieve my target of breaking seven minute miling over the final four miles.

I was thirsty and tiring but the lure of the sub seven willed me on, made much easier once I was down the final steep hill (Which was really painful on the foot) and running through town. I came home having notched up 22.1 miles averaging 06:58 per mile. It meant I’d run 82 miles for the week, which is half a mile down on my record week set the week before Christmas last year. Not bad for one that I had intended to be a step down week.

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Day 47–Blowin’ In The Wind

I was meant to be out of the door and running by 7:30 but when the alarm went off at 7am it was swiftly turned off and I was back under the covers – it was cold out there! And I was tired. Really tired.

I finally got out at 11am. I had been up for several hours mind you, just the first opportunity to run with the littlest one having a sleep and the other one watching CBeebies on the tablet whilst mum worked – I pointed out to her how implausible this would have been when I was a child, but it didn’t appear to register.

The run was a perfunctory affair – at least the skies were blue even if the cold stiff wind battered me at times to the point of literally being blown off course. It felt like I was eight minute miling for the eight or so mile I ran, it was pleasing therefore to see I was actually knocking out low seven minute miles.

Apart from the legs feeling a little lifeless and suggesting they needed a day’s rest (planned now for Monday) there was little sinister save for the right groin nagging away again. This seems to come and go as it pleases – hard to determine exactly where the issue is. All the while it doesn’t actually slow me I won’t fuss too much over it, but I know these things can change quickly.