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