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Day 115 – Getting There

Months ago I debated how best to get to Rotterdam. I didn’t want the hassle of flying, didn’t fancy the long old drive to Dover and beyond, and so stumbled upon the Dutch Flyer. For £45 you get a train from Liverpool Street to Harwich, the ferry to the Hook of Holland and a train ticket to anywhere in Holland – for me Rotterdam, naturally. Add thirty quid for a cabin overnight on the boat and thirteen pounds for the train from Grantham to London and that’s the whole trip done.

I now sit, with the one pint of overpriced Strongbow I will be consuming before bedtime, on definitely the most immaculate ferry I’ve ever sat on. After a pain free journey on the trains where I got to stretch the legs and enjoy the scenery, I’m beginning to feel this was a very good choice and quite an undiscovered bargain in terms of getting to Europe in comfort. My cabin is small, but perfectly formed, with everything you’d expect in a budget hotel but an awful lot cleaner.

We arrive in Holland a little before eight am, the fun bit is going to be trying to find the hotel, of which I have no idea where it is other than it is in Rotterdam. But I’ll save that worry for tomorrow and for now enjoy this big gem of a ferry and hope for a good night’s sleep.

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Day 114 – Nothing More To Do

Tuesday’s run was prescribed as eight miles mostly easy with a couple of quick bits thrown in. Ultimately that’s more or less what happened. A club run with a mix of runners who’d just run a marathon, those who were competing at the weekend and so were tapering and a few who were just there for the ride.

Most of the run was very casual, the left thigh nagged and ached but it wasn’t unbearable. We spent some time in the middle of the run deciding exactly what route to take. In the end we decided to just turn and retrace our steps back along the canal path. This suited me fine as I’m finding downhill sections the hardest to handle at the moment.

Easy paced all the way back along the canal path I allowed myself around 1km  of fast paced running once back on the main path. It felt easy and pretty quick, albeit with continued nagging ache in the thigh. Once home I stretched extensively and again the following morning, putting in some minute long stretches. These seemed to be doing something to the left thigh, at times I thought my phone was vibrating in my pocket; instead it was my  leg in a weird spasm.

I’d debated whether to run on the Wednesday; at the last moment I headed out and did just over four miles. The outward leg was mostly uphill to Gonerby, then coming down, once past the steep downhill, I ran around a mile and a third at marathon HR, which was coming in at near dead on six minutes per mile.

So aerobically I am ready to race on Sunday. The leg – well I am relying on three days rest, a productive massage this morning, and more stretching and massage building up to Sunday. I don’t really like this position of not knowing if I’m going to even make it on Sunday. I think I will; I think it will be painful; whether it will be quick – that I just don’t know.

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Day 111 – Just Need To Lose The Pain!

Shortly before heading off to physiotherapy, I put in a short run, which was planned to be six miles but, because I was running out of time, because I was suffering the annoying aching pain in the left thigh and because I could use the final week taper as an excuse, I cut it down to five miles.

There is little to report on this run other than, as mentioned above the left thigh was back to aching again. The Physio worked some ultrasound on the inner thigh where I reported the miracle cure occurred on Friday, hopefully that will do the trick, although I pin more hopes on my last minute massage on Thursday. As it is, for the rest of the evening the right hip hurt more. Oh and my throat is sore. Pre marathon taper hell. I hate it!

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Day 110 – Back To Reality

After the bliss of running fast near pain free yesterday morning, the hangover came on Sunday morning for the final long run before Rotterdam. The legs were stiff and simply didn’t want to know for the first six miles or so, aching and hurting, not firing properly. I stopped numerous times to stretch, things weren’t really getting much better. The strong head wind was making things particularly miserable.

Like last week I considered calling it quits but I battled on, the thoughts that right at that moment there were tens of thousands of runners taking part in marathons all over the world inspired me to complete a long run that is actually the shortest so far this year thanks to the joys of tapering. At around seven miles, coinciding with the change in wind direction, things began to pick up. I never ran totally pain free but at least I was running more freely and the mile splits indicated this. I ended up running twelve miles with the final three miles under seven minutes per mile.

That done, so the rest of the day commenced with an action packed Bahrain GP and loads of work to be done. An adrenaline rush through the day which saw me unwind by catching up on the Paris Marathon. Kenny Bekele is such a joy to watch running, his form is perfect. If I run half as well as he did on Sunday I’ll be very happy indeed.

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Day 109 – That Was Unexpected

I took the day off on the Friday, an attempt to allow the legs to recover. I spent a fair amount of the day doing a TFL stretch I found and single leg squats, which hurt the left thigh on each of the 150 or so odd times I did them.

Things were looking as gloomy as they have been in recent days until, in the evening, I just stumbled upon a sore spot on the inner thigh, down low near the knee. A little more prodding produced the exact upper thigh pain I’ve been suffering in recent weeks. This was exciting. A real development. I massaged the spot for a while, not as expertly as a professional but enough to generate a reaction. Lo and behold the pain I got when climbing stairs or single leg squats had all but disappeared!

Since the morning I’d half a mind to go out and run the Newark parkrun as a way of putting in a few solid miles in amongst an eight mile run. Now I really wanted to go – to see if the discovery had made any difference. I was up early, and in Newark for 8:30. A two mile warm up saw the legs a little stiff for the first mile but much less in the way of thigh pain than before. I stretched again before the start of parkrun, still expecting nothing more than three miles at hopefully sub six minutes per mile.

Before the off, there was a minute’s silence to honour the memory of Steve Worland, who tragically collapsed and died at last week’s Bristol parkrun. It’s always hard to refocus when the relative pointlessness of running against the clock is brought to light by someone who paid the ultimate price for doing something he clearly enjoyed, but the pleasure that it can bring to the tens of thousands up and down the question show that the benefits still outweigh the inherent risks. It was with that thought that I lined up, determined to enjoy the run, no matter what.

I made a measured start, and was delighted that there wasn’t a sniff of pain or discomfort in the left thigh, Hallelujah! I may have applied a temporary patch, to hopefully be fixed either by the physiotherapist on Monday or my masseur next Thursday, but it was great to be running 95% uninhibited by pain or restricted movement. Despite this I was only seventh after the opening few hundred meters. Not panicking, I soon passed a bunch of runners to sit second, only to be soon passed by another runner leaving me third.

I settled in this position allowing the two in front to ease ahead a bit, but the gap was never more than around five seconds. I passed through the first mile in 5:32, the second lap in 5:36, not helped much by having to weave incessantly to lap back markers. Approaching the end of the second of three laps, it was inescapably evident that I was slowly hauling in the pair ahead of me, who were seemingly inseparable. On the start of the final lap I caught them and without hesitation passed them to take the lead. One runner, Adam, who has come home first at numerous Newark parkruns, went with me and sat on my shoulder. I was enjoying this, I was running pretty quickly and it was feeling easy.

I went through the third mile in 5:25 and 5k in 17:12 on the Garmin. This course is very long, so I knew there was around another 300 meters to go to the finish of this 5(.3)km timed run. Adam sat on my shoulder until the last 80 meters when he put on a sprint finish. I let him go, not interested in chasing a small glory at the risk of damaging the thigh which had behaved impeccably. I came home second in a time of 17:52 which I was quick to realise was a course PB by 24 seconds! From barely being able to run at the start of the week to a virtual 5km pb!

The three mile warm down was not altogether perfect. The left hip was quite sore, although this loosened off as the run concluded. I’ll be interested to see how tomorrow’s run goes. Something tells me it could be quite a sore affair, although I am now, thanks to today’s run, confident that I will be on the start line at Rotterdam in reasonable shape.

Split Summary
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1) 1m – 5:32(5:32/m) 167/173bpm 93cal
2) 1m – 5:36(5:36/m) 176/180bpm 101cal
3) 1m – 5:25(5:25/m) 180/183bpm 102cal
4) 0.25m – 1:18(5:06/m) 181/182bpm 24cal