The Tuesday run, for a variety of reasons, never materialised. Family illness played a big part, the bigger part though was the left hip and thigh which was painful through much of the day and begged to be rested for an evening which had hill reps planned. They are always a test on the body at the best of times, for once I thought of the bigger picture and kept myself indoors.
The leg felt a little better on Wednesday, but still far from perfect. I headed out for a run which I had no firm idea over its duration or intensity – the theme being very much play it by ear. The opening mile wasn’t too bad, the left thigh took around half a mile before it began aching, similar to intensity to how it was on Sunday – not enough to slow me but enough to make running a not entirely pleasurable affair.
Running the usual park route, at around three miles I decided I was going to run further, originally thinking I could manage ten miles then, when the thigh began to ache a bit more, maybe eight then, a bit further along perhaps just back to six. Back in the town centre I thought I could maybe run seven so I headed back to the park. What was I doing? I couldn’t decide.
Then in the park the body decided to launch itself into a full on mile rep type effort. Not entirely sure why – perhaps frustration, perhaps a desire to see if the heavy mileage had killed my pace or not – but it did, and, somewhat surprisingly, there was no pain at all in the hip nor thigh. I slowed briefly at the crossing then, into Queen Elizabeth Park, I ran the entirety at pace, enjoying running pain free and fairly quickly.
Once out of the park I slowed the pace again and the pain in the thigh returned. This makes me think a part of the problem is coming from the IT Band (I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that the pain can be less when running at pace). Pleasingly too the final stages were run at around 6:20 pace and it felt like I was jogging. If I can shake this problem the things are looking encouraging indeed.