The last 5 months
After promising to keep this blog up to date during my marathon training, I ended up failing miserably due to life’s amazing ability to take you on a rollercoaster ride. So without further a do, lets delve into the last 5 months …
Newport Marathon, Sunday 29th April. That was the goal. Everything I was working for was to culminate on that day and hopefully end with me achieving a GFA (good for age) time. My training was going well, I was following my plan as best I could, fitting in my runs around work and my family.
My first marathon number that would never be worn
It started to get a bit more complicated in February when we moved house. As you know, buying a house, and the subsequent move, can be a very busy and stressful time. It was no different for us. It actually went about as smoothly as it could apart from the final 2 weeks when the top of the chain threatened to pull out due to how long things were taking. Thankfully, everything was sorted and we completed 2 weeks later.
We had spent the previous 3 and a half years living with Steph’s parents. This was, for the most part ok, but it was amazing to have our own space again. It did however, take some adjusting. This was probably the most challenging time for my running as it meant neglecting things that needed doing around the house to go running which wasn’t ideal.
Once we were more or less settled in, the only issue I had with my running was reconfiguring my routes now we’d moved house! That would soon change as my targeted race on 4th March was postponed due to snow. I was looking forward to doing Newport half marathon as not only a warm up for the marathon but also as a bit of recce for the day itself in terms of travel etc.
I loved the snow, until it started messing with my races!
As the snow cleared things took another turn for the worse. During a fast paced 15 mile run I felt a sharp pain on the outside of my left knee. I stopped to shake and stretch my leg out and got on with it. I felt it a couple more times during the rest of that run but didn’t really give it much thought. The next day, walking downstairs was extremely uncomfortable and my attempted recovery run lasted less than 100 metres from my front door.
The run that ended my marathon training
I’ve been very lucky in the brief time I’ve been taking running seriously, in that other than a few little bothersome niggles, I’ve been able to stay injury free. Until now.
I had Reading half marathon on 18th March as my final warm up race for the marathon. I was suddenly fearing whether I could run it so rested my knee as best I could but the couple of runs I did the week of the race were far from pain free. As fate would have it, the weather caused havoc yet again with more snow resulting in the cancellation of the race. As it happened, Newport half marathon had been rescheduled for the same day and was also cancelled. I wont go into detail but as a side note, the organisers of both races couldn’t have handled things any more differently, one much better than the other.
So that was that, both of my warm up races had been and gone without me being able to take part in either of them. It was probably a blessing in disguise as I ran 3 miles that same day and my knee was so bad I had to stop twice and I knew I had a problem. I honestly don’t think I’d have made it round Reading, and if I had, it probably wouldn’t have done me any good.
So with lots of rest not helping my knee, I had it looked at during a doctors appointment I had for an unrelated infection and was wrongly told I had ligament damage. Not happy with this diagnosis I travelled to Clevedon to a see a physio who also happened to be a veteran marathon runner. He almost instantly diagnosed me with IT band syndrome and laid to rest any faint hopes I had of running Newport marathon which was now only a few weeks away.
The road to recovery
My GFA dream was over. For now at least. I was on the shelf with a lot of rehab to do. It turns out my IT band issue flared up due to an apparent weakness in my left glute. So that meant lots of glute exercises moving forward, more of which I’ll talk about in more detail in another post.
On a more personal level, things haven’t been great at home either. We found out after we moved that Steph has Myotonic Dystrophy which is a form of muscular dystrophy. Because of this she has understandably had a lot to process, especially with what it could mean for her in later life.
We then had to make a horrendous decision to have Barney, our 3 and a half year old cockapoo put to sleep. He had always had a bit of a nasty streak but it was mostly aimed at other dogs and for the most part he was a lovely and loving dog. Unfortunately he bit 2 people in completely unprovoked attacks which left us with little choice seeing as we have 2 young children to think about. It was heart-breaking.
My little mate Barney in happier times
So there you have it. Its been an eventful 5 months and I hope those of you that are reading this can forgive me for prioritising my blog over life’s trials and tribulations but sometimes some things are more important. It does feel good to be back behind the keyboard so I intend to get back to blogging regularly again and will be focusing on my recovery from injury.
Until then, thanks for reading!
