Straining At The Leash

Well it has to be said that 2017 has so far turned out very different from how it was planned in my mind this time last year, I’ve so far had to take three injury breaks and have only really had two months of decent running that didn’t result in some form of malady. There have been highlights of course, notably conquering that massive hill in the early summer heat of Benidorm in May which was a triumphant moment, and two weeks after Frankfurt I still don’t know quite how I managed to navigate 26.2 miles with so much ease and enjoyment. I have been fighting since February 2016 not so much a battle against injuries but  more of a war against my own mind and its sense false of invincibility. Following the Portsmouth ultra in December 2015 (50km) I was at the peak of my fitness and ability but my brain opted to continue at that plateau rather than ease off for a few months and January saw me focus on increasing my pace a little with the intention of aiming for my first sub four hour marathon at Milton Keynes in May. Honestly it was never a workable prospect and although I did manage a twenty mile run in a touch over three hours it was not long before the inevitable happened. After doing eighty four miles in a fortnight at the start of February I felt some pain in my upper leg and I hobbled around the Portsmouth Coastal Half in around 2h30 including a very difficult sixteen minute mile in the middle. I rested for just under a month and made an attempt at getting back on the road in April but faltered after a mere three miles so I then had to make a decision. I was already prepared to miss Milton Keynes but I had a looming date with Sydney marathon in September that I had already booked including flights and hotels for both me and my wife, I was desperate to be able to do that race as it would probably be my only chance to do a marathon in Australia, not only that but it was a first chance for my sister (now an Australian citizen) to see me race. So I travelled to Milton Keynes and started the marathon and knew I probably wouldn’t finish it but then once I got started I just couldn’t stop, I have a great deal of determination to complete things once I’ve started them and the idea of failing to finish wasn’t something I was prepared to tolerate. Despite a very difficult final ten miles I did it but at some cost. My already fragile body was wrecked and it was a fortnight before I could walk again without a limp of some sort and my GP kindly referred me to a very nice physio who diagnosed a strained adductor and finally got me the massages and stretches I needed to start seeing me right. It all worked wonders and I completed Sydney in 4h52 without having to walk any of it, I kept up some mid level training for a month to see me through a couple of short local races but then realised I wasn’t as healed as I thought I was and so the racing shoes were hung up for a couple of months once more before finally seeing some action for the Christmas Eve Southsea Parkrun followed by a very slow and steady Christmas Day Parkrun the next morning. I got back into training at what I thought to be a slow and steady pace but needless to say once again my brain was running faster than what my body was quite ready for and despite putting in a slow but nevertheless course personal best at the Coastal Half marathon which, incidentally, is clearly a béte noir for me as it consistently causes me problems and I’ve never run it in anything less than a quarter of an hour slower than my half marathon pb, but symptoms of injury soon reappeared as I had simply gone too far too soon. So that was another six weeks of resting which meant missing the local St Patrick’s 10k and also the Reading Half meaning I had my first ‘DNS’ races. By late April I was ready to try again but there was no point in rushing to try and hit any kind of target as I had surgery looming at the end of May so I just went out slow and steady and enjoyed a few bonus runs with no sort of pressure, this included that marvellous ascent of Cruz Benidorm which had been a target of mine since I first visited that Iberian Blackpool almost a decade ago.

It took longer than expected to get over the hernia surgery but I made my first very tentative steps in my running shoes at the start of August with the idea of being fit for the Portsmouth marathon in December as a target of some sort, needless to say I made precisely the same mistake yet again and after doing fifty miles in the first ten days of September it was only a matter of time before something broke down and sure enough after an eighteen mile trail run it did. This time it was a minor bit of bursitis in the right hip and naturally it happened just two days after booking Frankfurt marathon plus the flights etc. The next month saw me put in just three runs, a reluctant twenty mile training (pre marathon) long run, the 10 mile Great South Run and then the big one, all 26.2 miles on the tedious streets of Frankfurt. And here I am two weeks later, the bursitis is gone, I’m injury free, I can run if I want but I don’t need to and although I’m straining at the leash to get out there I know that I’ve done enough to prepare for my next race which is a ‘choose your distance’ six hour timed event. My plan is to do twenty miles, six laps of the circuit, but I’ve never done a ‘circuits’ race before (although Maidenhead half was a loop and a half) so I don’t know how I’ll fare, I might have a couple of turns of the gyratory route and then make it a long twelve mile run home just to make things a bit more interesting. What ever I do I know there’s no real pressure so long as I get around twenty miles done just to top up the fitness from Frankfurt to see me through to the Portsmouth Coastal marathon just before Christmas and as that is a trail race for a large part I know that I won’t have a time to aim for, it’s better just to run happy and run without ambition and in turn that should lead to less injury woes!