Weekly news

It's been a relatively quiet week following a couple of weeks of fairly intensive running mileage.  Following last Saturday's trek across the Downs (see last blog entry), my left knee has really started to niggle.  I ran to work on Monday and it hurt way more than it had any right to - it's only 5 miles for goodness sake.

Fast forward to Wednesday evening - an appointment with Janine for sports massage and damage analysis.  With a feeling of dread I let Janine set about finding what I'd done to myself ...

Thankfully, it looks like my problems are down to tight quads, hamstrings and anchilles and are not directly due to my patellar tendon - that is just where the problem is manifesting itself.   HUGE relief, as I have let paranoia completely take over my mind.

"You have, of course, been stretching adequately, in order to compensate for all this extra mileage?" asked Janine in a matter of fact way while working on my calf muscles.

"Absolutely" I replied, "all the time - never a moment passes etc etc" I lied.

"Oh that's ok then, so this doesn't hurt or anything then?" as she pushed, what I think was her thumb, but felt more like a crow-bar into my calf muscle.

Manfully I buried my head into the massage table, or was that the medieval rack that I seemed to have transported to?  I could take this pain, I could fool this crow-bar wielding torturer, I am an Iron Man in the making ...  This ploy worked for all of about 4 seconds, after which the highly pathetic sobs and yelps that appeared to be coming from me, yes me damn it, showed the terrible truth.  I was in bloody agony, my muscles were as solid as concrete.

After the year I had in 2009 when I was forced to take nearly 6 months out and go through months of accupuncture and laser therapy for my patellar tendon, you would have thought that a sensible, vaguely intelligent person, would have learnt ...

Hmm, case in point there I think!  Back to running in to work today and the couple of days rest coupled with the torture session seems to have done the trick.  That and the whole ton of stretching I 'enjoyed' last night of course.  So, off to swimming tonight and I will be looking to work on technique again but will also be using my HR monitor to guage the effort.

Hopefully a nice long run tomorrow and then we'll see how Sunday goes.  Onwards and upwards ...